Liquid sunshine , Cornish Gorse

The liquid sunshine of Cornish gorse has filled my coastal journeys this Spring. The beautiful May coloured the coast a vivid yellow matched by my cadmium yellows dark and light and filtered into many of my new paintings.

I usually make a cocktail to match the theme of my annual solo show and this year it has to be the vanilla coconut fragrance and taste of the gorse flower.

The Cornish call gorse ‘Furzey’ probably due to its apparent fuzzy nature but picking the buds wasn’t so easy. A slow arduous process as the darn bushes have some nasty spikes.

There is also a lot of folklore associated with it. The proverb ‘ Kissing is out of fashion when gorse is out of blossom’; it was often used as wedding decoration and if a sprig was tied to the door on May day, you could get a glass of milk and slice of bread as a gesture.

I love painting gorse…..mixing cadmium yellows with paynes grey gives a beautiful warm greeny grey that is in the dark tangled undergrowth and with my loose spatter style, a myriad of yellow profuse and mix to make a dense yellow carpet to depict the gorse in full flower.