The paintings draw on landscapes with a personal resonance, including the Sussex Downs, Cornwall and the Norfolk coast. Familiarity is important and locations are revisited over many years. Images are developed through a process of direct observation in the landscape, capturing the colours, rhythms and structures, in pastel and watercolour. These sketches become the basis of developed, abstracted paintings in the studio using acrylic or oil paint, firstly on prepared paper and then on canvas. Constructing and retaining an accurate representation relies on memory, but of course this fades over time. The paintings capture an approximation and can never entirely be pinned down to an exact location. As they evolve they reveal a sense of the place rather than a close representation of the original location. Key colours are accentuated and certain shapes and forms emphasised, as a formal process exploring balance and tension between these elements begin. Dark blues, greens and grey hues contrast with tints of red, orange and yellow; darkness contrasts with light, shade with luminosity. Despite the immediacy of the marks, the paintings are resolved over many weeks and months – the paint is applied with speed and fluidity, layer over layer. Colours and marks reveal themselves but also disappear in the progressive development of the emerging image.
