Early Work
Early Work
During the final year of my Degree course I stopped making abstract paintings and began to look and to draw. I needed something to analyse so I often drew myself.
In the late seventies Art education tended to turn out Abstract painters. The studios at maidstone school of Art were a row of modern barn-like silos and although the school was set in a park the only windows in the studios were high narrow slits below the ceiling.
After Maidstone I began making little oil paintings under Cezanne's influence. They were bright, busy energetic paintings and mostly on pieces of board salvaged from skips.
Vertical Objects on a Shelf. oil on canvas. 24" x 21". cat 141
Of course there is no such thing as perfection, however, I do occasionally refer to 'perfect' paintings. These are usually simple compositions, paintings that seem to be perfectly balanced and in which there's nothing out of place. This was my first of those perfect paintings, I made it after leaving the Royal Academy Schools in 1986.
