January 2023 – Oil Paintings by Navdeep Kular

Ever since I saw this painting in the National Gallery, London, I have been wanting to paint it. It is my tribute to the great artist Henri Fantin-Latour whose flower paintings are a treat to watch.

A Basket of Roses (8H X 12W in) Ode to Fantin — A Basket of Roses

There have been Dutch and Flemish old masters whose floral paintings too, adorn museums around the world. Van Huysum, Heade and Jan Bruguel are some of the famous old masters who created realistic paintings of flowers and were patronised by the high and mighty of their times. The vases with flowers of various seasons combined together on mostly marble table tops are the highlight of their paintings.

My personal liking is for Fantin’s paintings. The compositions, lighting and realism are all eye catching.

A Basket of Roses has pink, red, yellow, white and peach roses, all put together in a basket in an attractive manner. The roses toppled over on the table create a flow in the painting. While painting, I realised how many leaves were there along with the roses.

Happy viewing!

While shopping at supermarket, I look at shapes and colours of fruits. At the back of my mind, I usually think what will look good in a painting. I appreciate the glow that light generates and try to recognise shapes and patterns of different colours on the objects.

This time around, I liked the colour of plums varying from yellowish orange to red, maroon and deep purple. I picked up plums of different colours and thought that they would look good in a painting.

Then I was roaming around the house looking for other components in the composition. After painting couple of Teapot and Grapes paintings, teapot was foremost in my mind. I tried various arrangements of plums around the teapot and finally settled in for this version and painted it.

Still Life painting of teapot and plums by navdeep Kular — Still Life with Teapot and Plums

I was still not done with painting plums. The fascination with metallic objects led to this carafe for its shiny reflective surface to paint with the plums. To create movement in the painting, I rolled over two plums from the plate. I liked the garland formed by actual and virtual plums. This is what ‘Still life with Carafe and Plums’ look like.