25 New Oil Paintings featuring The Ashdown and Rye Bay
Fairfax Gallery Tunbridge Wells
Painting on the Ashdown Forest.
I’ve lost count of the numerous times I have visited and painted the Ashdown Forest. It has become part of my history and the paintings I make there are a reflection of my deeply held feelings for the place. I have worn a path to a few locations in the forest that have continued to inspire my interests as a painter. With each visit comes a new determination to find fresh ways of conveying my encounter with a familiar place. There is a feeling of scale, light and beauty in this landscape and that, perhaps is the reason that keeps me going back.
Painting Winchelsea, Rye, Dungeness and Camber Sands.
I had the opportunity to make a series of paintings on Winchelsea beach, which previously had been impossible due to adverse weather conditions. At low tide the old wooden breakwaters become visible, looking like skeletal remains still defiant against the sea. There reflections remain in muddy pools for a short time before the tide returns and the beach once again becomes a long stretch of shingle.
The beach at Camber feels enormous in scale with its sweep of sandy dunes leading on to a swathe of multi- coloured layers of fine sand. Capturing some sense of the space here in the bright month of June was both a challenge and a joy.
In all the places I have visited and painted for this show, there has been time invested in looking, making and responding. Paint is applied in bold gestures of oil and colour that map out each thought, decision and correction. What results has to convey something of the essence of each encounter and done so in the language of painting.
