My work embodies themes of self in relation to a deep concern for the state of the natural world, and humanity’s relationship with it. I predominantly use oil to interpret landscapes and seascapes with a tight colour palette, which shifts slowly over time.
Seascapes, at the moment, are my main subject; they utilise thin layers of oil, diluted with mediums, to create undulating, sensuous movement, imitating the complex facets of waves, meditative, repetitive, yet never the same. Dark depth in the foreground gives way to reflected light from brooding skies tinged with violet, as English skies often are at dawn. These waves act as conduits for more complex ideas; skeletal forms tumble within the swell, their stories unheard; faces and eyes emerge in the lustrous glossy surface; distant ships drift silently on the horizon almost merging with the sky; myth laden shadows, tell tales of figures beyond the frame, and beyond reality. The paintings express a reverence for nature and its beauty, while also holding a sense of unease. Torn between light and dark, joy and fear, inner and outer worlds, they dance and swell, becoming like rock, land, grass or cloud.
Landscapes have left innocuous romanticism behind and are now concerned with core values relating to the natural world in crisis. I am drawn to extreme weather events, natural phenomenon, in paintings which veer between natural destruction and reverie, belittling the viewer in the wake and power of an uncontrollable wild.
b Gt Yarmouth 1971
Gt.Yarmouth School of Art 1991
Norwich University of the Arts 1996
Buy my work: My Shop | Rise Art | Contemporary & Country | Chappel Galleries