Teapot & Spoon

Bid for this painting on Ebay!

Before we went climbing this morning I painted this little study. I'm really pleased with the cloth underneath the teapot - I've been thinking about using a Gustave Klimt-style decorative theme for the background of the large Tea Party painting. I happened upon the idea of using floral fabric when I was sketching a mock 'tea party' out on the deck a couple of days ago. By lucky chance I was drying our floral comforter on the washing line, and so it provided a natural backdrop for the compostion. I found this pink fabric in a cupboard whilst I was hunting for still life ideas - it was a curtain from my precious Matilda (the'76 Dodge Camper we travelled for 18 months or so in)

The spoon is deliberately large, and is a referance to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland. I'm going to play with the scale of things in the painting, partly out of the Wonderland influence, and partly because this painting will be about being young and everything seeming bigger than you. After all, little girl's tea parties are about pretending to be a grown up - mixing sloppy mud in a cup instead of tea, and wearing mum's big shoes and makeup.