Page 69 - Creative Arts 2019

Greater Love

Workshop
Art

To augment the Greater Love performance, our
art scholars were asked to produce a backdrop
of desolated wooded landscape, using as their
main starting point a painting by ex-pupil
Arabella Bennett. For further inspiration pupils
looked at the paintings of Paul Nash from World
War 1. The backdrop measures 60ft long by
7ft high, so you can imagine how physical, as
well as creative, a challenge this was for the
nine Year 11 and Sixth Form scholars painting
it. It took us a little while to get an efficient
and consistent system going, but with regular
reviews of our progress during the day, we did
manage to achieve continuity of colour and
style throughout the whole 60ft painting. The
scholars worked brilliantly all day, in the end
managing to produce a landscape that evokes
sinister foreboding and the desolation of war, as
well as a strange beauty with its striking craggy
trees and burnt out colours.

V.C.Mason
Sunday 7 Oct 2018