Alla Prima Still Life

Alla prima, in the context of oil painting, means completing a painting in one session: everything, all at once, the first time, in one go. It’s a very direct way of working: applying wet paint on top of wet paint rather than thin glazes of colour on top of older, drier paint layers.  It’s also very demanding exercise that requires planning

For me, the appeal of painting alla prima is that I can experiment on a small scale with different materials (perishables, metals, fabric, etc.) and themes (colours, textures, shapes, lighting, etc.). One of my goals with alla prima is to push chroma to its limits in the pigments available to artists (see the oranges, lemons, limes and grapes as an example).