Julian Merrow-Smith – Postcard from Provence (update)

One of my favorite contemporary painters is a British painter who has been living and painting in the south of France for many years. In 2005, he became one of the earliest artists to adopt the practice of “Painting a Day”, (perhaps second, not long after the originator of that idea Duane Keiser). This calls for painting a small painting each day and putting it up for auction on his website, Postcard from Provence. I first encountered his work and posted about him in 2006, and I’ve posted a few times since, but not for a while, so this update is overdue. Merrow-Smith has an uncanny ability to get right to the esssentials, providing just enough visual information to capture the beauty of a landscape or still life with the minimum of brushwork. And what brushwork! His website, in both the current auction and the archives, offers many high res views of his work, enough to see the delighfully painterly surface and confident brushwork that has had me coming back again and again and going…