What’s been so good about this Bath showing of Lived-in Landscapes is that transplanting these images out of their usual Cornish context has highlighted their underlying content for me; in other words that they’re not just about living in Cornwall but about the broader issue of how people interact with landscape.

The Chapel Row Gallery has been an excellent venue to bring out this aspect. It’s ambience is reminiscent of that ocean light that was the theme of my previous show in Falmouth. As such it’s been sympathetic to the Cornishness of these new pictures while enabling them to ”breathe” and so communicate something of the influence of that human presence that is their real theme.

A big thankyou to Gabrielle Hawkes who helped bring out this underlying theme in her introduction to the catalogue that you can read by clicking here.

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An aspect of painting and drawing that I wanted to write about and invite your comments on is the whole business of shape and direction in both picture formats and forms within compositions. This is something I’m very aware of with my own work but I suspect it’s important to a great many artists.

For example I find that, for me, the shapes of picture formats influence the way I read them.

A vertical rectangle  hints at reading down or up the picture which can enhance the feeling of the energy of shapes grouped within it.

Likewise a markedly horizontal format   seems to invite reading across the picture as in a panorama, so much so that with very long pieces I’ve often broken such surfaces down into square sections partly to slow up the eye, partly to simplify shapes and allow for variations on a theme from one square to the next.

Then there’s the square format itself. To me equal height and width imply something very resolved and settled, a quality I sometimes use

 to suggest contained stresses   , sometimes to underline a feeling of balance   already inherent in the shapes within the picture.

An interesting variation occurs when a square is tilted onto one of its corners.

Now its sides all become 45 degree angles often suggesting heightened tension and giving impact to the forms contained by them, either highlighting their stresses   or livening up more low key elements such as seascape shapes around a horizon line  .

Such up-ended square compositions make a strong visual statement on any wall due to their marked diagonals whilst these diagonal sides also make them look very much at home hanging on a staircase.  

Within any picture format the way that forms pick up on an implied geometry of proportion  is also something that fascinates me and that I often use.

Another quality I like to use is what I think of as the dovetailing  of shapes with other shapes. 

To me all such phenomena create visual rhythms which complement the colours and tones I’m using and together with them can give me a sense of the piece having a life of its own, re-presenting something I’ve seen in a way that may refer to a specific place or time but aims at a celebration of it rather than a slavish imitation.