The Artist's Technique and Method

Edward Hasell McCosh gives considerable importance to working method.

He prepares his own canvasses using best quality fine linen and good quality professional handmade stretchers, priming the canvas with glue and then oil primer, sanding lightly down after each coating and then finally re-stretching the canvas. He will nearly always give the canvas a final tinted priming. The artist likes to give the canvas several months to be well dried before beginning the picture, so keeping a stock of prepared canvases on hand of all sizes at the ready.

Following the traditions of the old masters and working with similar methods, the artist prepares his own paint and mediums; the pigments are ground in the studio fresh each day before commencement of painting. He then uses an approximation of the methods the old masters may have used to build up the painting. He starts with an initial concept drawn by pencil on paper. He then transfers this using willow charcoal to canvas. Willow charcoal easily rubs out with a duster so allowing correction. He puts the canvas aside and revisits it the next day to allow changes always preferring to start work early in the day when the light is best and to see with a fresh eye. When he is satisfied with this he begins the actual process of painting by working in the picture using a diluted limited palette of earth colours with the object of creating an overall impression with the emphasis on values of light and shade and overall balance both of composition and colours keeping the colour close in tonal value freely making changes as the mood of the painting dictates; what is the painting saying? Then turning what it is saying into a visual reality. Again, the painting is put aside and revisited. When the paining is dry, he then builds up the painting layer on layer using a combination of direct painting, scumbling and glazing, moving back and forward from one method to another steadily deepening and stengthening contrasts and colours. The painting is again put aside and revisited allowing the painting to tell him when it is finally completed. He thus achieves a richness, depth of colour and finish that otherwise would not be possible. At all stages the artist lives into the picture. A recent example of one of the artist's still life paintings is illustrated in the publication by Dorling Kindersley on advanced painting technique, "Oil Workshop II".

The artist studied first at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee which is well respected for its emphasis on tutored drawing, and then at L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris under the late Professors Nicolas Wacker and Abraham Pincas, Professors de L'atelier des Techniques de la Peinture. The artist's admiration for the craftsmanship and precision of classical painting and especially the Flemish painters of the 17th century, and all that can be said through such methods of painting is something he strives to emulate. The artist's paintings are increasingly widely held in private collections both in this country and abroad.