Behind the Goal

Behind the Goal looks through the white geometry of a football net towards the illuminated pitch beyond. Found while exploring Truro City's ground before an evening match, the painting grew from one of those viewpoints that only really revealed itself after walking around the pitch... several times.

When I visited Truro City Football Club to gather reference photographs, I didn't want to stay in one place.

Kev and I must have walked around the pitch about ten times while I photographed the ground from different angles, looking for viewpoints that might become paintings.

Behind the Goal came from one of those circuits.

As I passed behind the goal, I noticed the white pattern of the netting against the deepening blue sky. There was something about the geometry of it that immediately caught my attention, particularly with the light beyond.

I wasn't completely certain I'd found a painting at the time, but there was enough of a glimmer that I knew it was one of the photographs I needed to look at again when I got home.

And that confirmed the hunch.

The light in my original photograph actually came from the setting sun, but when developing the painting I transformed it into the glow of a floodlight. That change allowed me to push the scene further into night and strengthen the contrast that had interested me in the first place, the bright white structure of the net against the dark blue sky.

Rather than painting the match from a conventional viewpoint, Behind the Goal places the structures around the game in the foreground. The net becomes part of the composition itself, framing the illuminated pitch and the football continuing beyond it.

It was a view I might easily have walked straight past.

Luckily, we went around again. 😂

Painting coming soon...