October 2020
Recollection in Colour catalogue available to view online
Curated by Edna Battye and Waj Mirecki who have offered me great support and encouragement.
I am proud to be exhibiting this collection of 36 paintings of landscape with the running theme of colour. I use colour to express my emotional response to subject which include poignant memories and experiences of cherished landscapes. Some paintings refer to the beautiful vistas on my doorstep; the Norfolk Broads delves deep into my past and is my present. The water moving through the place I love holds century old family history and that cannot help but come through in the work I make about it, which looks deep into its recessive colours as if reaching through into the past.
Paintings also document far away places and the impression they have left upon me. I paint these some time after my return as if the digesting of their impact needs to fully form before I can express it in my work. Every place I visit has a different background colour; India is a burnt deep orange, Thailand is a bleached pale green for example. I am not sure if these are figments of my imagination but I feel these colours to be true and see them in the landscapes, like a distant hum on the wind.
Delving into the night is an experiment in atmospherics in painting. I have been looking into the dark side of nature and that begins with the actual darkness of night and its subtle source of light and variation in colour. The work I have made on this subject are subtle shifts in the deepest blues, hand painted pin prick stars, peeking through a forest canopy, the light vanishing from a path.
I’d like to thank Edna and Waj for this opportunity to exhibit this collection of my work in my first solo show.