Statement

I work non-figuratively because I believe that sensation and allusion are stronger realities that straightforward depiction. Also, since nothing in particular is borrowed, it is more difficult. At the beginning of each new work I have no idea how it will progress but at some point, with luck, the colours and shapes will resolve themselves into a composition which promotes an experience beyond that of the paint itself: of outside light and space, a sense of place, the weather.

A lifelong familiarity with a particular coastal dune system in North Wales is a recurrent influence, informing the work beyond recalling the particular. I attempt to make paintings which work in several ways simultaneously, as a formally satisfying arrangement of colours on a flat surface, as an evocation of place and as a personal statement of my own feelings. Work on paper and made outside, with pencil, conte crayon or pastel, records appearances. These studies are sometimes used as the starting points for studio-based linocuts. Whilst most of the figurative work is made in Wales, visits elsewhere are recorded in drawings made in Manhattan, Saskatchewan, the Sinai Desert, Lesbos and at other sites In the U.K.

Cuillin Bantock October 2001