FS Colour Series: Shopping Bag Inspired by John Constable’s Earthy Browns

Dark earthy browns tinged with red like SHOPPING BAG are a defining feature of British, 19th century landscape painter John Constable, lending depth and weight to his brooding, dramatic scenes. A key figure in the British Romanticist school, Constable painted the British landscape as a wild, barren and untameable place, where overgrown plants tangle together…

Contemporary artist Peter Doig makes deeply atmospheric paintings that are loaded with hidden narratives. From private houses in amongst the trees to boats carrying strangers to an unknown land, his voyeuristic paintings invite us in to ask questions, but give nothing away. The settings for his cinematic stories are almost always abundant landscapes, where trees,…

Contemporary German painter Tomma Abts makes curiously familiar, yet entirely abstract artworks resembling intricate childhood puzzles, folded origami or tactile scraps of textile laid out on top of one another. Nostalgic faded or retro colour schemes include soft shades of off-white and pale beige like ANGORA, alongside other equally intriguing in-between shades. The quiet, understated…

From dusty mountaintops to well-trodden tracks beaten dry by the sun, soft shades of pink like DESERT SAND crop up time and again in Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin’s art. He coupled this warm, hazy shade with lush, tropical greens and blues, conveying far flung, idealised and paradisiacal escapes from the grey smoky haze of the increasingly…