"Welcome to our studio in the Highlands of Scotland, from where we share ‘Reflecting on Oban Bay’, the second original oil painting in my RNLI Scotland collection; the first being ‘Reflecting on Longhope Sound’ – from our fund-raising project - ‘Awash with the RNLI’.

SUBJECT - Whilst making arrangements for the reference gathering trip to Oban we were invited by the Oban Lifeboat Station to participate in their Annual Gala fund-raiser and leapt at the opportunity to offer our help. One of the Gala days features the hugely enjoyable and. renowned, raft race in Oban Bay and so we set up my easel on the grassy knoll above the Lifeboat Station to capture the day’s activities in one of my on-the-spot montage watercolour paintings – including the lifeboat and the station building. The finished painting was popped into its frame and donated to their fund-raising raffle as a main prize.

It became evident from this day spent at the Lifeboat Station that a suitable composition for my original oil painting was not to be found in the immediate vicinity of the station itself. At the end of this full-on day of painting at my easel, all filmed by Eileen, we wandered over to a restaurant on the opposite side of the harbour for our evening meal and that’s when the magic happened.

COMPOSITION – The upright format of this composition allowed me to enfold the Oban Lifeboat Station and the lifeboat itself into the landscape – where it naturally nestled against the backdrop of the elevated landscape, A landscape that provided an undulating vertical vista, filled with a harlequin effect of light and shade, the perfect foil for the sparkling blue foreground of Oban Bay. I had already decided to capture the scene in the late evening sun, as it cast its low light over the Lifeboat Station, highlighting it’s quite unique and individual architecture – a gem of a white-washed building.

Yet something was missing, my intended composition was not quite complete. At our table, we watched as the slowly setting sun picked out the Lifeboat Station and at that precise moment a yellow fishing boat hove into view, right in front of the station, glowing bright as it moored in the dying rays of the sun. I leapt out of my seat, rushed across the restaurant with my camera and popped off a few shots – this was it, the dazzling yellow provided a brilliant focal point, one that I could never have envisaged – a gift that balanced the composition and completed the scene.

As you watch the Masterworks behind-the-scenes Video Reveal for this painting, you will also come to see how this composition evolved further as it was being painted.

METHOD - Traditional techniques are the cornerstone of my artworks, whatever the scale, or subject. Working in layers, gradually moving through from the darkest recesses to the lightest sparkling highlights is essential. There is absolutely no rushing this process - it requires meticulous attention and considerable patience, for the overall result has to be re-assessed along every step of the way.

Building-up texture, using directional brush-strokes of impasto, tube-consistency, paint, not only allows me to create texture and movement - the very positioning of those strokes, will also affect how light falls on the surface of the painting, which, in turn, influences the viewer’s experience. With each subsequent layer of impasto, followed by glazes and tints, the overall colour and balance across the entire painting is refined, so that I realise the effect of light and shade that I had in mind, when first plotting out this composition.

Glazing with transparent, coloured mixes of paint, allows me to selectively enrich and enliven specific areas of impasto. Tinting with fluid, mixes of light-coloured semi-opaque paint, allows me to push back specific areas, which in effect, throw forward other elements - thus creating distance, depth and volume.

Every element in the composition has to be explored, to ensure the end result isn’t contrived This is what makes painting particularly exciting for me and especially so in using traditional techniques. The result is almost inevitably an unexpected delight and it is this that drives me to push the limits of my work.

Welcome on board ‘Awash with the RNLI’ - our long-term, fund-raising project - central to this open-ended, fund-raising project is a growing collection of original oil paintings from which we publish Fund-Raising, Limited-Edition Prints. The subject of each of these ‘narrative’ paintings is prompted by a back-story unique to any one particular lifeboat station or its environs and community  -  which makes every one of the paintings unique.

As always, we thank you for reading and watching, with best wishes from Eileen and myself,”

Paul Taggart

Artist : Author : Presenter : Producer