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About Stanley Pettigrew
About Stanley Pettigrew
Stanley Pettigrew is an open air painter, who works in a modern, yet traditional style.
His paintings have been hung in The Royal Hibernian Academy over the years, and many successful exhibitions have been held in the Milmo-Penny Fine Art Gallery, Ailesbury Road, Ballsbridge. Stanley’s paintings have been auctioned and sold by several auction houses, including such well known names as Sothebys.
Design in Nature
When painting a landscape, I always start with the sky. The sky influences everything beneath it. It determines the mood of the landscape, whether sad or happy, sparkling or wistful. The colours I mix for the sky I retain in my brushes, only deepening them in tones for the shadows across mountains or the dancing lights on water. Even the leaves of trees have a reflection of the sky colour.
This unity of sky and landscape underlies a far deeper unity in nature.
There is an immense design and pattern in nature. Tides ebb and flow according to schedule. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter come back in unwavering succession. The planets never leave their courses, the same cause always produces the same effect.
The spiral shape of the minutest shell on the sea shore is echoed in the spiral formation in crystals, in the spiral arrangements of nebulae, the spiral in the seeds of plants, the horns of animals, the bones and muscles of the human body, the curving shape of birds feathers, the trunk and branches of a tree. Purposeful design is to be found in every part of the natural world, organic and inorganic and in outer space.
Purpose and plan necessarily imply a mind, and so we reach God; God reveals himself to us.
Facing this immense design in nature, which is ceaselessly unfolding before our eyes, there is but one approach – awe, wonder, reverence, humility, and joy. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth ? …..When the morning stars sang together. And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
