Appreciation

Bathers at Asnieres

This huge canvas was completed by the French impressionist Georges Seurat in 1884. It currently hangs in the National Art Gallery in London. Its construction was painstaking. The composition is so well-balanced and the paint was applied minute blob by minute blob - a technique called pointillism, giving the painting a strange opaque/statuesque quality. This is enhanced by the palely marbled skin colour of the scene's main actors. In the distance, ninetenth century industry provides a discordant background to the still and leisurely peacefulness of the foreground. In some ways this art is about the ordinariness of human life and how we may be close to each other yet wholly unable to connect. I love this painting. I first saw it at the age of sixteen when I hitched down to London to see a free concert in Hyde Park - I wonder what happened to Grand Funk Railroad?

Seurat was only thirty one when he died of diptheria. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his artistic legacy. Have you got a painting you love?