Commissions - Pitharia

One thing leads to another – painting the dome and working with Doug on the garden eventually led to painting two pitharia, the large earthenware storage pots traditionally used in Cyprus.

Repairing them in the first place was in itself quite a challenge – the large one had been very badly botched up with wire that protruded through bulging filler in a variety of colours and textures. Eventually I succeeded in returning them into something that more resembled their original shape and texture, and more use as a surface on which to paint – but a surface that was still pretty rough on both pitharia.

I had taken it into my head that it would be fun to paint dancing figures, but had no source material at the time – until I remembered Matisse’s 'La Danse' and 'Musique' paintings, at least for one of them – the larger. One thing I had forgotten to take into account was the distortions offered by a vessel that has a widest circumference of 4 metres and a foot of perhaps 30 cms. It plays havoc with your proportions when you are working with figures. I had also not reckoned on the kind of handicaps presented by the weather when you are working outdoors – if it’s cold you can only sit and paint for a short period before you need to go and thaw out, if it’s hot you can only work in the cool of the day – early or late – and then there may be problems with the light, and once it warms up beyond a certain temperature you can barely lift the brush from the palette to the painting without it drying. Often the sun will be in your eyes, so you can’t see properly what you have been doing. And even a slight breeze will shake your hand enough to mess up what you are doing....



On the smaller pot I decided to replicate some of the wonderful animal designs found on ancient Cypro Archaic pottery – still so very modern, and still so witty. Here the problem was mainly one of working a fine design onto the rather coarse surface – it’s very hard to paint a straight line on a rough ground.

The stands for the pitharia were specially commissioned by Doug - once again we borrowed ideas from the ancients and gave them a modern twist. And finally there was the question of moving them to their final resting places. It takes three men to roll one of these large ones around a garden and these were even more vulnerable on account of the damage they had suffered, and now had a rather more sensitive surface than they had before being painted… Another delicate job for the fork lift truck!