Tuesday 12 January 2010
I have travelled extensively over the past two years, gathering images of towns, landscape and people, going about their day to day lives. Recreating the atmosphere through the use of light, colour and movement. Recently I have found that paying more attention to detail gives the viewer a central focus allowing me to draw them in.
I am constantly developing my style and painting skills to achieve the ultimate in communicating experience and ideas. Working with AIM has helped me to develop my awareness of local issues and the place of the artist within the community. Focusing on a theme and developing the ideas with the other members of the group has enabled me to move forward with certain aspects of my painting. I have recently turned my attention to painting people in everyday situations and also portraits. This has helped to develop my eye for detail and how to capture the personality of the sitter.
Morecambe has changed beyond recognition to those of us who have always lived here. The community has suffered from the down turn in the tourism industry and the bay has changed greatly due to the new sea defenses.
I’ve depicted the place as I perceive it to have changed, over the past thirty years. The decline crept in over a period of fifteen years. Holiday flats became bedsits for the Heysham Power Station workers during its construction. This relatively prosperous time took the focus away from the future of tourism and as a result the bedsits slowly filled up with the migrant unemployed, some of them being bussed in by desperate landlords. The place has become a trap for those living there, no work, poor housing and no hope of escaping. This has led me to associate it with a kind of open prison or rehab centre for those who have hit a low in their lives. Morecambe doesn’t offer any more than an opportunity to tread water for a while. This concentration of problems has led to tragedy in the bay. Things need to change, demolition and deconstruction is the answer. The authorities have recently come to realize this… only twenty years too late!
I am constantly developing my style and painting skills to achieve the ultimate in communicating experience and ideas. Working with AIM has helped me to develop my awareness of local issues and the place of the artist within the community. Focusing on a theme and developing the ideas with the other members of the group has enabled me to move forward with certain aspects of my painting. I have recently turned my attention to painting people in everyday situations and also portraits. This has helped to develop my eye for detail and how to capture the personality of the sitter.
Morecambe has changed beyond recognition to those of us who have always lived here. The community has suffered from the down turn in the tourism industry and the bay has changed greatly due to the new sea defenses.
I’ve depicted the place as I perceive it to have changed, over the past thirty years. The decline crept in over a period of fifteen years. Holiday flats became bedsits for the Heysham Power Station workers during its construction. This relatively prosperous time took the focus away from the future of tourism and as a result the bedsits slowly filled up with the migrant unemployed, some of them being bussed in by desperate landlords. The place has become a trap for those living there, no work, poor housing and no hope of escaping. This has led me to associate it with a kind of open prison or rehab centre for those who have hit a low in their lives. Morecambe doesn’t offer any more than an opportunity to tread water for a while. This concentration of problems has led to tragedy in the bay. Things need to change, demolition and deconstruction is the answer. The authorities have recently come to realize this… only twenty years too late!
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