Description
These small paintings have had a long gestation. Environment and circumstance have always influenced my practice and since completing my Fine Art degree in 2014 I have had to adapt – I no longer have the luxury of space, or access to the materials and equipment that made anything possible. The past two years has been a period of taking stock, revisiting ideas and following paths that I had previously discarded. I have also had to develop ways of working that fit with employment and family life.
These constraints have proved to be an interesting challenge, forcing me to reflect on what in my practice is important to me, and to focus on those ideas that will ultimately result in a coherent body of work. I have had to learn how to express myself within the confines of a picture frame.
Inspiration comes from surprising and sometimes mundane sources. My long and boring twice weekly commute has found me considering landscapes; what defines a painting as a landscape? For me, it is the horizon, that horizontal line where air and earth meet. Sometimes hardly visible on a dull misty morning, at other times a distinct boundary between two clashing colours.
It has proved a challenge to hang on to a particular image caught only briefly at speed. To hold on to that image until I can get it down on paper, to find the colours that never quite do justice to the reality. I hope you like what you see.
