Published by The Wildlife Art Gallery, Lavenham 2005
from the Foreword
“This book brings together drawing and paintings made over several decades. They celebrate places that have been long-standing sources of inspiration, as well as those of rare excitement, far away. Each picture takes shape in its own time, but once made, it lives on in the artist’s mind, making connections with fresh experiences. I am curious to see what emerges when they are all assembled.
Delacroix is quoted as saying to an artist friend, that though everything can be the subject for a painting, the real subject is yourself, your impressions and emotions in the presence of nature. So, everything an artist looks at is also coloured by an inner eye that seeks to relate the outward experience to the insights and feelings that prompt a work of art.
People seem to know me best as a bird artist, and birds have been a passion since childhood: their inspiration is direct and immediate. Landscape though has always been the main focus of my art: these painting probe into relationships of form and content – shape, colour, and compositional energy – to express a deeper level of thought. Similar energies lie instinctively behind the quicker bird drawings….
…So the birds come from first-hand experience; the landscapes from long acquaintance, allowing associations to take root, transforming the land, cloud and seas into metaphors for an inner state of being.
The artist’s job is to open eyes – to see what is hidden, to make connections, and to put into shapes, colours, textures and forms, thoughts that reassemble facts and feelings and catch echoes of what might be to come – above all to make something memorable and true”
JB, July 2005
Land Marks and Sea Wings is available from the Aubrey Art Gallery, Great Dunmow, Essex.
and we have copies for sale as well – £25 inc postage in UK – please contact us if you would like a copy.