A series of work in response to the Brightlingsea coast.
In late 2023 I observed and responded to the Brightlingsea coastline where I live. I spent time drawing through the window of the Art Hut in Brightlingsea.
Photographing things I saw that interested me, and looking at them in black and white was a good way to think about composition. Here are some sailing boats outside Brightlingsea Sailing Club, I liked the way the boats appeared to be piled up.
I made a painting in response to this image, it is on mdf board.
Below you can see a number of small mdf blocks with abstract images, these are free-standing or can be hung on the wall. I am interested in abstracting what I see, to show the essence of it in simples shapes and colour.
I collected discarded pieces of wood that already had marks, holes cut out in various different shapes. All of the pieces already had a history, a memory of what had gone before.
The wood became the collage elements, in a similar way to making a 2D collage with paper. I considered the shape and size of the pieces, the space between the shapes and the colour. I began to think of this work as a collage construction.
I wanted to explore taking the 3D forms back into 2D painting. I started by cutting out cardboard shapes and adding paint to them.
This construction was informed by my memories of the coast I had observed and the 3D forms I made, the piece became richer from the memories I had made.
These are wooden cubes with mixed media including paint, pencil and collage. They are inspired by the coast. The idea is to re-arrange them to create different compositions using all or a sub-set of the cubes. Moving the blocks allows you to imagine and re-imagine the landscape.
This work culminated in a solo exhibition in The Art Hut, on the Brightlingsea Hard. You can only see the work by looking in through the windows, in the same way that I started this project by looking through the windows to draw what I saw.
