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Otter
Valley Landscape 13" x 15" 33cm x 38cm
My studio and home in the Otter Valley has been my central
working space for many years. When I first arrived and for
a long period, I worked along the banks of the River Otter,
the estuary and the slopes of the valley, which seemed to me
to be a lyrical landscape with a Palmer like intensity. I painted
the villages, farms, stone walls, cloudy skies, wet roads and
cows around my studio. With such rich material around me I
was able to closely observe the changing seasons and to produce
paintings which reflected the moods and physical changes of
the landscape. Looking back at some of these early works, I
see that reflected images and contrasts of light and deep shade
are recurrent; something which is central to my work to this
day. In these paintings, as in my later works, I have tried
to explore the way in which light breaks up form until solid
objects disintegrate, merge and interchange. |
From the Otter Valley I gradually moved further afield and began
to paint the coast, along from Hartland Quay in North Devon. I was
overwhelmed by the physical scale of the cliffs, the power of the
sea and the tragic history of that stretch of coastline. Hartland
is a place of very distinct and varying moods. I have seen it in
very benign conditions, where it is like a still pool with light
reflecting off all the surfaces. Sometimes it’s a wild place,
with the storms racing in and the great swashes of water hitting
and eroding the coastline.
I worked, with great urgency, on a much larger scale than before,
using broader knife techniques. Many of these large paintings found
their way into public collections, culminating in a series of five
Hartland paintings commissioned by their University of Exeter to
commemorate the Silver Jubilee. These paintings can be seen in Queens
Building at the University.
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