NEWS
The collection of new work has developed within a framework of self imposed restrictions. The physical location for all the paintings and drawings is a valley close to my home in West Penwith. This valley is somewhere that over the past five years I have traveled through on a daily basis. I felt it was time to try and understand what keeps pulling me back here. After the first drawings were undertaken it became apparent that there would be enough points of reference for an entire lifetime not one collection. So a decision was made that all the paintings would be of a small scale. This is the first time that I have created paintings on this smaller scale.
The idea of inviting the poets is very much belonging to my own response to poetry, and indeed music from a young age. I have always had a visual response to both art forms. Having read the iron man by ‘Ted Hughes this has given me a life long passion for poetry. Reading this again recently the same images came to mind almost thirty years on. Creating a powerful emotional response that I can’t explain.
The link with music is also visual and linked to my childhood. Often listening to classical music with George he would tell stories as we listened to the music. One piece being Beethoven symphony No.4 in B flat, listening to this we wo uld be running through a wood. Many years later listening again I can still smell that wood, having never physically been there. This is what I am attempting to create in the work. Now reading the selected poems I return to the paintings and the Valley from which the work developed.
The paintings walk the line between representation and abstracted elements. The intention is allowing greater access to the work for the viewer. This could be on a purely visual level, cerebral or visceral. My hope for my work is that given time it will create a response in the viewer similar to my response to the poetry of Ted Hughes the music of Beethoven and the story telling of George Barnard.
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