Back in June 2008 we published an article about the artist Richard Clare in which we wrote that he was working in what had to be probably the smallest studio in Barga, at only 7 metres long and not even two metres wide … in effect, it was a corridor. Actually if you stood in the middle with outstretched arms it was possible to touch both walls. In 2009 he moved in to a larger space in front of Casa Cordati but the damp in that studio forced him out during the winter.
2010 starts and once more he has a new studio this time close to the Giornale di Barga offices in Via di Borgo, Barga Vecchia and this time it is a little larger … and he needs every single centimetre available to him as he has just accepted a commission for a large landscape – a more than 3 metres wide landscape and the canvas only fitted into the new studio with millimetres to spare.
We said that we will be calling in on Richard over the next couple of weeks to document how the painting was going.
The painting is now finished and so we thought that maybe you would like to see some of the stages the painting went through before its final version.
It took six weeks from start to finish with Richard using sand from a building site and chestnut flour mixed with the paint to get some of those interesting textures we can see in the final painting.
The Richard Clare site can be seen here