Lindy Guinness was inspired by John Constable’s (1776-1837) studies of clouds. Constable was well-known for his depictions of clouds at different times of day and year. The first scientific papers on the subject were published during his lifetime and Constable studied them closely. Annotating his works with times of day and wind speed, his paintings are so accurate that meteorologists today can work out the weather patterns and conditions of Constable’s time.
 
Guinness’s plein air studies are strikingly poetic and evocative of Constable's tempestuous works. Observed variously from trains, Malin Head (the most westerly point in Donegal), Hampstead Heath, and above all from the artist’s studio in Ireland.
 

For almost twenty years Lindy Guinness was surrounded by painters and paintings but hardly held a brush herself, despite a remarkable early training that included painting with Duncan Grant and studying at the Slade with Oscar Kokoschka. It was in the late 1980s that she was able to become a painter again, and it is almost as if this long gap has, in some way, contributed to the sense of urgency and the immense drive and focus that is at the heart of Lindy Guinness life as an artist.

 

She has always been a highly instinctive painter, limited by the quick fluctuation in the Northern Irish weather, the inability of the cows to remain completely still for long periods and the demands of her own life, to a certain period of time spent on each picture. These recent paintings mark a new method of working. Some have been resolved quickly and spontaneously, but many have been repainted over a considerable period of time, taking on and overcoming problems of a particular technical nature about how a picture can be made to work, without losing the artists essential nervy liveliness. This absorption has fed back into her nature as a painter and her approach to painting.

 

- Dickon Hall, October 2004