"Tea with Piet"
10"x7" Oil on Canvas
© Andy Wood
Stolen
I first became interested in the paintings of Piet Mondrian when I was an art student. I saw a connection between him and Jan Vermeer which intrigued me. In this painting I imagined him having a cup of tea with a friend in a motorway service area; an environment which I thought would suit him. The dominance of vertical and horizontal lines, the lack of (prominent) diagonals and the (mostly) primary colours seemed to me to be like one of his late paintings. Not knowing what he looked like, it was fortunate that the horizontal bar of the window frame hid his face.
I have been lucky in that only a few of my paintings have ever been stolen. Sadly this one was purloined by an art gallery in Germany in the 1980s. In my life I have never resisted the impulse to steal ideas from other artists so perhaps it is karma that this one was taken from me.