Paper Collage study 2 – Original

I grew up by the coast in Cornwall and spent my informative years in the South West of England. The amazing light, the huge and ever changing skies and beautiful dramatic coastlines, became etched into memory.  I became influenced by the abstract expressionists Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and Ben Nicholson, whose work draws directly from experiences of a dramatic or calmness in nature and landscape. More recently I have found myself looking at the work of  Turner with his amazing sense of light. I’m inspired by the patterns nature creates – the force of the elements against the landscape, and the art it creates by itself with erosion and decomposition against rock, sands, and man made objects. 

My work is never an actual place, as I paint entirely from memory never from photo’s or en plain air. Instead I start with remembering a moment, and how that moment felt, the effect that being in the landscape has on you. I hope to build an atmosphere in a painting which draws you in and allows you to imagine yourself there,  stood on a cliff, a beach or behind the dunes, exposed to the elements and the unpredictability of nature. I strive to capture a feel and a recollection of somewhere the viewer knows or remembers wherever in the world this may be. My paintings are primarily about the light and the feelings a place can evoke in the viewer, the emotions that a memory of a place and time can stir within. A memory of thoughts and feelings within a landscape, often a special and private moment, where the vastness and beauty of the landscape around you brings a sense of perspective, clarity and calm .