People ask: "Why abstract?
Why not paint what the coast actually looks like?"
Here's the thing - I spent 40 years as a photographer doing exactly that. Capturing what's there. The precise moment. The decisive click.
But photography has a limitation: it can only hold one fraction of one second.
What if you want to express 75 years of mornings? Decades of storms? The accumulated weight of returning to the same cliffs day after day for many many years?
You can't photograph that.
But you can paint it!
My abstracts aren't landscapes.
They are fossils of experience - all those years compressed together, layered like the geological strata in these cliffs, pressed into paint.
The rust-red underpainting?
That's 50 years of creative foundation.
The blue-grey middle layers?
Decades of observation.
The white surface marks?
This morning's walk.
All visible. All present. All supporting each other.
Today I give you this black and white version purely because it permits You to imagine deeper, further into how our marine landscape actually Feels.
"Seven Decades of Dorset: Where Ancient Coast Meets Living Art"
On and off for 75 years, I have walked the same Dorset shores, watched the same ancient light dance across Jurassic cliffs, felt the same wild weather that has shaped this coast for millennia. My abstract expressionistic paintings..
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