PAINTING STORIES

Two new paintings that depict the old bridge in Aberteifi

By Eloise Govier

aberteifi Bridge

Aberteifi Bridge looks across the bridge towards the Albion, the Castle Inn and old buildings associated with former industries. Historic mapping indicates that there was an Iron Foundry on Station Road. The shape and form of the historic bridge is exaggerated in the paintings, it is a significant bridge and I have a lot of memories associated with this area from childhood and beyond.

Aberteifi Bridge has a real evening or night-time quality; to me, the lit-up windows create a homely scene. Looking at the painting now it is finished, I particularly like the lighter buildings in the background and how it layers and creates depth to the scene. In the painting you can see the emergence of a green palette on the roofs and some of the buildings that lie in the background. Whilst painting Aberteifi Bridge I started to imagine a painting of Aberteifi that embraced an all-green hue, and I started working on The Old Bridge, Aberteifi directly after.

In The Old Bridge, Aberteifi the viewer is positioned on the opposite side of the Teifi looking up towards the town. The painting depicts the bridge, Bridge Street, the castle walls and the roofline of the High Street. The quayside is captured in the lower left quadrant of the painting. A boat is also depicted on the river Teifi.

For this painting I used cerulean blue, turquoise and a light green; I also embraced other colours to adapt the shades to create a broadly green, greenish-blue (blue-green) palette. In the foreground there is a solitary boat. I intentionally abstracted the boat and the water around it to suggest a synergy between the two, perhaps the brushstrokes and marks that depict the boat can sometimes morph into water patterns and the flow of the river in the mind’s eye. The boat in the painting is used to emphasise the flowing river and indicate the life that still occurs on the Teifi.