Land is my first language and is the starting point for this new body of work. Landscapes of a sort these evocations of land are not vistas in the traditional sense, nor are they abstractions from the land but rather land perceived as I move through it. The still and the moving create a simultaneous past and present, like two paralellel universes.
In these paintings time is in two modes. They are mappings of the nature of things and the memory of things. Back in the studio the gap between sketching and painting allows the subconscious in. Accumulated fragments begin to inhabit a borderland between figuration and abstraction. Composite journeys, rooted in the language of remembered land, map forms that travel like musical notes through the painted surface. Light is both a measurement of time and a means to illuminate. It is a continuous becoming that helps to piece together the fragmentary nature of what we see. For me these paintings are a way of making something beautiful out of the chaos of flawed perception and the transience of life, they are 'pathways to the sky'.
To see all the paintings from the exhibition go to Paintings Passing Through
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The paintings are based on around 200 sketches and on memory. Drawn quickly as I travelled, June 2012 to June 2014, from North Devon to the Cornish coast. Sketched on a variety of papers with a simple pencil or compressed charcoal pencil. Colour notations for me are unnecessary because the emotions of colour get embedded in the memory by drawing.
