Artist Statement

As a landscape painter,whose interest lies not in narrative, but in form defined by light, I have been looking for motifs as contrasting as the cultivated landscapes of the Mediterraenean and the deserts of north Africa and Australia.

Although de-populated, they are marked by a structure imposed by the human hand ( geometry of fields, repetition of trees and other natural elements) or by my own formal order of compositional elements , resolved usually within the square format.

The images , of scale ranging from 12" x 12" to 60" x 60" , work both on a figurative and abstract level, the surface of the panels characterised by varied marks and textures achieved by a complex mixed media technique combining plaster, resin, wax, sand, acrylic texture gels and pigments.

I developed the technique in my search for visual equivalents of the particular character od each landscape - the subtelties of the various media combine to evoke the genius loci of each place.

But , ultimately, it is not even the spirit of the place that is the true subject of my works: it is the dialogue between the figurative elements and the abstraction of much that surrounds them - the competing claims of the 'realistic' motif and the flat surface of the painting - as well as the tension between spontaneous and accidental effects and the order which ultimately contains them.