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filler@godaddy.com
About The Artist
Style
I am a self-taught sea and landscape artist, who has lived in East Kent since 1991. I work in mixed media but mainly in gel based acrylic on board. My works capture the different ways in which the natural world marks the passage of time and I look for echoes of the past in the present. These works reflect the quiet beauty in unassuming scenes.
I am inspired by…
William Turner 1775-1851 (whose earliest abstractions of light predated impressionist and abstract art)
Peder Balke 1804-1887 (who painted atmospheric Norwegian seascapes North of the Arctic Circle).
Process
My work begins with a theme, which can be as simple as capturing the tide rising or falling against a wooden post or a sea wall. These moments can be quite brief so they are usually sketched out and then worked up in the studio, with photographs as an aide mémoire.
The composition is marked out in pencil onto canvas or board primed with white gesso. Composition is important to me so I work hard to create interesting perspectives that give a dynamic to the scene.
The painting process then begins in earnest with much of the colour being mixed on the board and adapted as the process unfolds. In this painting, an old wooden barge is slowly engulfed by the rising waters of the tidal river Deben in Suffolk. Beyond the trees on the opposite bank is the world famous Saxon burial site of Sutton Hoo, where 1400 years ago a tribal ruler was laid to rest inside his longboat.
“I feel privileged to live close to the North Kent coast and to have the opportunity to paint the same scenes that were so beloved by one of the greatest and most innovative artists of his time, William Turner. Turner described the skies over Thanet as ‘the loveliest in all Europe’”
Kevin Jackson