THE ARTIST
I'm a landscape painter living and working on the Isle of Wight. I'm 42 years old and have lived here all my life. For the last 15 years I've been exploring the Island countryside and developing a style that expresses the simplicity, beauty and power of the landscape.
To express some more ideas about my work I've included here the gallery information piece which I wrote for my last exhibition The Distance at Quay Arts in July 2002.
This exhibition is about the distance, about looking out across a landscape and feeling a sense of space. It's about the power and subtlety of the sky and the colours and tones of the land. Each painting is a study of a moment, a moment when the familiar Isle of Wight landscape changes into something more simple - when we suddenly see with a deeper richer clarity.
I'm fascinated by the Island landscape and I paint it constantly. I love the light of the changing skies, and the soft lines of the hills against the horizon. The painter Giorgio Morandi spent all of his time painting groups of bottles and glasses looking for the simple truth, and I suppose that's what I'm trying to do with the landscape here. To keep exploring a single subject looking for something timeless.
I paint these small landscapes because I like to emphasise the intensity of the subject by working quickly and freely. On this scale a single subconscious brushstroke can create a huge swathe of countryside. This let's me paint as directly as possible so that the painting evolves naturally.
I paint in oils on primed wooden panels because I like the depth and versatility of oil paint. On a flat wooden surface the paint moves smoothly and evenly and maintains its strength of colour. I like the simplicity and unity of colour in nature, so I use a limited palette of just primary colours; three blues, two yellows, one red and Titanium white.
As a landscape painter I've always been interested in how different artists interpret the landscape. I really like the oil and watercolour sketches of Turner and Constable and the Shoreham paintings of Samuel Palmer. I also like the paintings of Matisse and Rothko for their expressions of colour and tone.
For me the landscape has a presence that can't really be expressed in words. My aim is to make this the subject of each painting.