Mill Brook Forever!

2019

Acrylic colour on 18 x 24 cm fiber board (MDF).

Like Young Sailors this is based on a photo from my childhood. The vintage atmosphere and slightly worn-out colours are there for a reason. This was also the first try at creating a painting within one day. To add flavour, my goal was a clearly impressionistic look. The masterfully effortless brushwork of that movement is still a thing to strive for but I do find the blissful heat of childhood summers quite effortlessly, and in that respect I'm very satisfied.

All the artistic and compositional credits of this image go to my mother who had a brilliant eye to capture just the decisive moments in countless other situations as well. In her youth she was a really skillful and creative painter (working in watercolours as a hobby) but she doesn't have any of her works on display. "With a low profile..."

Mill Brook winds its way in half circle around our childhood home and the only spot deep enough for a dive, at least for a little rascal like in the painting, is in front of our platform. When we were children in the 1970s there were constantly many of our village youngsters and often our cousins, too, there to act as Weissmueller against the lurking crocodiles. We had also constructed a straw-hut village on the fields next to the brook and in the adjacent trees we had a scrawny treehouse which gives the title to this site. A liane was attached to a tree branch so that you could fling yourself over "the precipice of Mutia". Those were good times.

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