New Statement and Exhibition notes for Casa do Ideias show

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These notes will accompany an exhibition of work at Ateliê Casa das Ideias, Campeche, opening on October 13, 2018:

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Statement

I'm a British painter. I travel around and paint small pictures, plein air, in oils. I studied in Scotland but have been living in Brazil for the last twelve years. 

I`m trying to make pictures that that give the satisfaction you feel when a jigsaw puzzle piece snaps into place or which have the rightness of peanut butter on buttered toast, or a few notes on the piano that sit together so well as in a piece by Debussy ...

At the same time I want to make things that show the look of a place.

And at the same time as that I want my pictures to be about how I feel at that exact point in time when I`m making the work.

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Notes

Some of the pictures here were in the BRDE show in June, but a good number have never been shown before. 

Beiramar XXV, oil on card, 2013

 

The sea is an inevitable subject for those who live on the Island of Santa Catarina.  The sentimental idea is that the sea, always in motion, can reflect our subjectivities more readily than other landscapes. 

I grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland, a city that turns it`s back on the grey North Sea- for good reason as there it is essentially hostile-  as a result I carry a prejudice against the sea, a prejudice I can`t escape even here, and which perhaps explains the tenor of the seascapes here.

Flowers, January oil on card, 2017   SOLD

The still lives are flirtations with an obvious European format, one which I come back to from time to time. Per-determined formats are hard as it is so difficult to act freely and originally within them.   

Both of mine are takes on Symbolist approaches of the 1890s, as seen in Gauguin and Redon. 

Flowers from Brazil, oil on card, 2014

I include also a dense landscape from Ratones- an essay in yellow and gold: 

Ratones, edge of a forest, oil on card, 2013

I am especially pleased to present a picture from Rome, that most splendid of cities for painting. It is one of a run depicting its fine bridges. I am very happy with the colour in this Roman picture. It's one of two pictures here taken from more distant painting expeditions- the other being from Puno in southern Peru- that unusual, if claustrophobic, city on Lake Titicaca.

Ponte Margherita, oil on card,, 2012 SOLD

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