Galleries:  Exhibition ‘RESERVATION’   2023

The exhibition entitled ‘Reservation’ brought together new and existing works. The theme of the show focused on the impact on and the displacement of different kinds of habitats through the demands of the built environment. The paintings visualised the tensions inherent in the unfair struggle between humans and ‘nature’ so called.  There was also some subtle reference to the current conflict in Europe as intimated in some of the titles such as ‘invasion’, incursion’, ‘deluge’ ‘refuge’ etc

Title: Invasion. (2023) Oil on Canvas.

This painting makes reference to the way that architecture has continued to impact the natural environment. The title makes allusion to an ambiguity between two forces; buildings invading the natural world or the natural world overcoming the onslaught of the built environment. Whilst the painting was being made the news from Ukraine was of  war on the frontline in which neither the built environment nor nature were being spared. In a sense the painting references the struggle between opposing forces. The colour with the broad yellow band makes a covert refence to the flag of Ukraine. This painting sets up the whole dynamic for the paintings that follow.

These are paintings based on landscapes I’ve been walking through during lockdown and the pandemic of 2020-2023. The paintings  are a way of  working with the displacement of pictorial space; the push and pull off the surface as well as the  illusionistic,  perspectival  and aerial, spatial aspects of colour. There is a sense of flux and uncertainty as part of the processes of looking, recording and translating into paint. There is some relation to various artists who have used a gridding system such as Coldstream but also to many others artists, including Courbet, Cezanne most obviously in the use of the motif of trees and the relationship to buildings to the structuring of the paintings.

Galleries:  works produced in 2020-2022

The beginning of the ArtOne series.

Watercolour sketches and some etchings featuring the artOne building at University of Chichester which I used to run.

When I retired the management chucked fine art out of the building to convert it into a centre for nursing and health care studies. (who would have guessed?) 2021 was the end of a significant site of art education in the uk and fine art was moved ingloriously to the university site in Bognor Regis (a town not know for its art world credentials!) The staff are managing to create a silk purse out of piggy ears (as befits contemporary installations(!)and keep the visual ‘visible’ whilst the Nursing degree bandages the finances and warms the beds in Chichester…

These works are the beginning of a series that will use the building as a motif. The modularity of the shed construction is just right for some vertical and horizontal investigations!

Photographs: On-going 2020-2022

Thank you for taking the time to view my work, I hope that you enjoyed it.