60 x 84 cm acrylic on slim wooden board
by Eldest Sonshine, at age 14
UPDATE: This glorious painting has just exhibited in the Royal Academy Young Artist's Summer Show 2024!
Not only did it get chosen to be hung at the exhibition in London but they chose his artwork as the poster artwork!
We are so incredibly proud and excited for our Max!
I'd been waiting to give Max a huge canvas for such a long time. I was finally able to do it this weekend after a friend gave us a picture frame they no longer wanted. The back boards to frames are brilliant for painting on. They can hold way more paint than even heavyweight paper can which suits Max and his thick layers of impasto painting down to the ground.
I set the artist up with large quantities of his favourite base layer paints, loads of tools, a damp towel for spillages and smudges on his skin and invitied him to play.
He was so excited to see how big the canvas was! Clapping and grinning and happy-humming! What a joy! The first thing he did (as he has done for many paintings in a row now, I think it's becoming his trademark!) was to paint a thick base layer of his favourite, grounding, safe red. Then on went its partner colours: purple, indigo, yellow, white etc...
By the next day the paint was dry and ready for the second layer. This time he wanted to mix colours and asked for a lot of white to mix with various combinations of colours. As you can see he mixed some really beautiful shades. For the second layer Max created two lovely arches using the scraping tool.
And finally the finishing touches; the gorgeous, green-stemmed blue flowers, again arranged in a gentle arch shape. Oh how beautiful!
When he was finished I asked Max as usual what he'd like to call the painting and he said to me "blue flowers" and I said "Oh Max they look like cornflowers!" He looked at me a bit confused so I asked if I should show him and he said yes. Once he'd seen what cornflowers look like he said that was the name of the painting. So here we have it.
Cornflowers. Another masterpiece don't you think?
I'm just insanely giddy with pride.