Quotation from my social media on 22nd August:

“this painting was so difficult! .. i added the leaf to make it beautiful. the gold frame inner was added just before that. last i changed the red tones some more.

then added the silver and chrome frames lines to maximise the optical power. the leaf fell into my garden days ago. i didn’t know what it was seeing it a way off on the grass, curled over.

i realised it was just a leaf in the corner. i varnished it a couple of days ago. it made me think of plastics pollution.” – 20th August at 2213hrs.

After this quotation the following day I decided to overpaint the faded whitish varnished gold to strongly reinvigorate its radiant tones. There is much palette knife work for canvas coverage and most of the rectangles. The red rectangle is all brushwork.

After the difficulties of this painting, then pure joy.

This image is a reasonable likeness of the artwork after two days of drying.

Gold, chrome-like silver and bronze can vary according to the light source whilst photographing. The image above displays some light and some shadow to give you an idea of how those three colours could appear on this canvas.

Whilst everything is complimentary I feel two qualities bring this artwork to life. Firstly, the paintwork in the red rectangle. I need to replicate this style in new pieces. Heart emoji eyes.

Secondly the organic leaf itself. Here we are framing an important part of the recyclable living world. I say we since fans share my experience of loving our planet through this artwork, and your own too of course.

Here is the leaf (edited photograph) the day it was found:

The leaf changed with the varnishing overnight. I allowed some curling to remain in the final artwork, rather than straightening out the leaf flat to the canvas entirely. It has a hardened, edgy feel quality with the dried varnish. Nicely sensory to the touch. I enjoyed running my finger over the leaf in the artwork, although I have placed the piece into a deep wooden box frame, at least for now.

Plastic pollution saddens us all. It’s something I have journalistically campaigned much regarding.

It’s just one detrimental area of our commercial world, a collective world society I have and am campaigning to help improve, reverse and somehow mitigate.

Let’s make real-world differences we can all be immensely proud to achieve.