To the enthusiastic golfer, our newest printed canvas, ‘Fairway‘ may well be reminiscent of the fairway on a golf course, with its rows of green colours and blue pennant flag shapes! It was originally painted in the 1950s as a feature wallpaper design. This bright pattern has a refreshing, outdoor quality, evoking sunshine and shade, and blue sky.
A Closer Look at the Design
There are only three colours, but there seem to be more because the triangular shapes look a different blue next to the pale or dark green stripes. The broken white outlines have been created using wax resist and the design has been painted in smooth Designers’ Gouache.
This striking and beautiful design seems very simple at first. However, there is a considerable amount of optical complexity as we look beyond first impressions. The darker green stripes dominate, but the bright green pushes forward. The lozenge shapes in both the paler and dark stripes become noticeable as the blue triangles appear to recede.
There is a strong vertical emphasis overall. But with a longer study of the image, the blue triangles on the bright green stripes lead the eye horizontally across the design. ‘Fairway’ has a restful quality because of the green colours, and its apparent simplicity, yet visually it is an active image.
Restoring ‘Fairway’
The original was painted on a very large scale and has been cut up into smaller sections since then. Our archivist/conservator has pieced the design together digitally, and we have now printed ‘Fairway’ on a much smaller scale. This gives an overall view of how the pattern would have worked as a wallpaper.
‘Fairway’ has nevertheless been challenging to reproduce with accurate colours. After scanning all the sections of the original, the backlit digital image then has to be reinterpreted into a fine art print. Sometimes the prints lose their onscreen brilliance in the process. Much experimentation has to be carried out to counteract this. The original colours of ‘Fairway’ were particularly elusive but eventually we arrived at an accurate reproduction.
This beautiful design is now available as an archival-quality A3 fine art print or poster, handmade greeting card, or an 8″ printed canvas.