Yesterday I delivered paintings to the Thoresby Gallery for my solo exhibition, ‘Light & Line in the Landscape‘, which starts on Tuesday. Cynthia has been hanging the paintings today, alongside a small selection of my ceramic sculptural works. There are over 40 paintings, drawn from a range of locations, reflecting the contrasting themes in landscape painting that I love – urban and countryside, man-made and natural environments, the large-scale versus intimate detail.
The eye instinctively follows patterns, looking for focal points within our visually rich surroundings. As a painter with an interest in buildings, I enjoy following man-made features of a landscape that repeat into patterns – be they the obvious rhythms of windows and doors or details of corbels, keystones, drip molds, fence posts and so on. I like to give equal weight to both the general and the particular in my work. Leaves can have as much if not more of the limelight as cathedrals.
The natural world contains alternative varieties of subtle and intriguing pattern making, from the distinctive gesture of a scoured cave to the lie of the grass. In making this painting of Tintagel I explored new methods of mark making, which offer interesting potential for future work.