PREVIEW / Mural Commission Studio Practice
“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”
Chartreuse. A Painting. Aubergines. Queen Victoria. Hydrangeas. And a few words from Lord Melbourne. Some interesting starting points for the concept behind a bespoke fresco mural commission we are poised to install for a private client in Herefordshire.
The fresco mural is intended for their 1830s townhouse garden room, so we have ensured it will sit alongside the clients' new interior scheme but also welcome in the natural environment outside their large French windows.
After reading the quote, we knew we wanted the mural to represent the clarity and freshness of real wisdom as opposed to perceived wisdom. And for the piece to express the challenges of dealing with history and change, and in knowing which voices to listen to in searching for wise, guiding words.
With the studio practice walls, we went in two directions from the colour palette we created - light and dark - giving the client the option of co-ordinating or contrasting with their intended wall colour of Little Greene Pale Lime. We also wanted to create some talking points and to show different fresco techniques in the building up of layers of the hand-mixed pigmented plaster.
The left 'green' panel (as one viewer pointed out) inadvertently had something of Monet about it, fresh, watery and light; whilst the right 'purple' panel was more filmic, smoky and mysterious, with a restricted palette of two colours.
We invited our clients to the studio to view and discuss the pieces, and they happily chose the left 'green' panel as the direction they would like to pursue. Next Saturday is installation day. Wish us luck! We are very pleased to be working with the talented Samuel Callen again to produce a film on the day, and look forward to posting this in the next couple of weeks. We will also have photographs from installation day on our Instagram @astermuro.
Photographs of the finished fresco mural in situ will follow after Easter when the room decoration is complete.
