Night Tide

Night Tide and Constellation are being shown by the Adam Gallery at the London Art Fair this week.

They belong to a group of large new works on paper that take the series of drawings I have made in recent years under an open sky on the east coast to a new level and scale. It conjures up a particular space where land and water meet, where the shifting light radiates across the salt marshes and where the tides move back and forth through the delicate maze of creeks and channels. It is also about the passage of time, a record not only of my own presence within this aqueous field but also of the incidental life that flows over it, from the migrating birds to the scattered flora that lines the ancient tracks and colours the scattered margins of distant islands.

These images, like others before them, was made on a single day, and the prevailing conditions are mirrored in the drawing, in the way it succumbs to a sea breeze, an enveloping mist, or a sudden downpour. Pigment dissolves, runs and dries in unforeseen ways (and with unexpected results) as the paper’s surface becomes rain spattered, mud flecked, or softened by the rising waters. And each time the resulting image belongs as much to the elements as to the artist who began it.

London Art Fair 18 - 22 January 2012