Description
Alan Marshall
ISBN: 978-0-9571811-2-0
Hardback, 112 pages
Published: December 2012
There is a certain familiarity about the brightly coloured watercolour paintings of Michael Coulter. It isn’t just the popular East Anglian locations, or even the depictions of everyday life in the countryside. Most of us will recognise his work through its appearance on greetings cards, calendars and even wrapping paper. Michael has become something of an institution in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Michael works from a combination of field sketches and photographs he has taken on location. An initial sketch will provide the broad basic composition, and then he will make use of highly detailed photographs in order to layer in the details that make his work so easy to identify. He explains that the photographs will be scattered on the table, and he will select various elements for inclusion in the painting, almost like assembling a collage.
In the 25 years since he left Woolverstone School, Michael has completed more than 1,300 original paintings and spawned thousands of cards that greet visitors on many of the region’s high streets. In some ways, he has now become a part of the East Anglian landscape that he so loves to paint.
