THE THAMES

These paintings began during lockdown when my daily exercise was jogging down to Wandsworth Bridge and resting looking over the central parapet. They complement the nocturne series, typically by pushing the horizon high up the canvas leaving a vast space similar to the sky in those paintings. In this way, the water becomes the star instead. Both these series’ are concerned with paint as colour-field as much as they are concerned with their respective subject matter. Where the nocturnes’ primary interest for me lies in trying to find an equivalent in paint for that infinite sky-space, these paintings are attempts to render the rhythm and mass of heaving tidal water. It surprises me how much the concerns of these studies remind me of the life-class. Drawing from the model is most successful when the sense of muscular forces and the skeleton beneath the surface of the skin is understood and conveyed. Similarly, large bodies of water like this have a heft and energy that needs to be present in the painting through a balance of depiction, rhythm and calligraphy. It doesn’t help that the water never stops moving either! The square format is used again to undermine the representation as if they could be hung in any orientation as abstract paintings.