Paintings inspired by Van Gogh

I have always loved the loose swirly style of Van Gogh's paintings.  The way he uses paint is inspirational. The brushstrokes go in all directions around the canvas.


I also love the bright colours, which are I like to use in my own paintings.


Some of my favourite Van Gogh paintings are where he has a lot of texture in the painting, such as cornfields, grass and trees. I particularly like the way he paints patterns in to the sky. I would have the longest blog in the world if I put all my favourites on here, so this is just a few.

I have used the swirly style in some of my own paintings. The first one is called orange godetia, and hangs above the fireplace in our living room. It is mainly impressionistic, like most of my flower paintings, but Van Gogh has inspired the background.

The next one takes Van Goghs swirly paint style to extremes. This is a painting of an iris flower. At first I just did the swirls in the background, like the previous painting, but then I decided to blur the edges of the flower in to the background....and then I carried on across the whole flower!!  It has abstract qualities about it, and looks really different from a distance than how it looks close up. 

It is quite a large painting, and really dominates a wall space. I had it in the kitchen for a couple of years. It then went on display in a local hospital for 2 years. It is now sitting in the corner of my studio waiting for either a new home, if I can sell it, or maybe being hung somewhere else in the house.