I’ve just delivered a painting to a client who wanted to bring the essence of a landscape that she’d known since childhood into her home. The bay between Tresaith and the Ynys Lochtyn peninsula is like a bowl of water and light, sea and sky almost indistinguishable, held by the outstretched arms of land. It is a place to rest and breathe.
The strong character of the recogniseable headland gives the painting one foot in the figurative, but it swims in the formless abstract of sea and sky. Its pale greys and ochres invite you to explore the subtle variations of tone and like a swan’s plumage the pale colours respond to the light falling on them, so that in the morning sun it is dawn and in the evening light the painting too becomes a sunset.
A few months ago I was reading about how the English painter Matthew Smith (1879-1959) aspired to….”create something as living as nature, so that it itself may continue to live.” And I hope that the surfaces of this piece have qualities that make them as responsive and explorable as the natural world.
