2024: Common Ground
RWS Gallery, 3-5 Whitcomb Street, London WC2H 7HA     

'Common Ground' is the title for the exhibition which four members of the Royal Watercolour Society have decided to share at the prestigious new Royal Watercolour Society galleries in Whitcomb Street, just off Trafalgar square in London. The four members are myself, Robin Richmond, Linda Saul and Frances Hatch. Under the umbrella title of Common Ground we are all four presenting four distinct collections of work.

 

Tidal Surge 2024

 

I  have chosen to give my collection a title that underlines the fact that  frequently from one exhibition flows the beginnings of the next one. This one is no exception.

 

    The sea in all its iterations has obsessed me since childhood. For the past two decades the daily incantation of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC has continued to keep me entranced with all the visual possibilities it offers. From visualising Sea Areas Viking and Bailey and South East Iceland to appropriating Nautical charts both vintage and modern, all  give me the material to create imagery that is both representational and symbolic and indeed emotional.

    I am most familiar with the The North sea, it is 'my' sea. I observe the passage of the tankers along the horizon, the windfarms, the subtle changes of light and tidal movement; I also imagine what lies beneath. For with increasing coastal erosion and whole communities lost to the sea, a recent source of fascination is Doggerland; the land bridge that connected the landmass of Britain to Northern Europe more than 10,000 years ago but which I can only explore—and exploit—imaginatively. Hints of that past era are gradually being recorded yielding imprints of auroch, forests and tundra, traces of mesalithic human activity as well as the hundreds of well documented wrecks spanning centuries that themselves represent human evolution. A source of ideas I am only just beginning to explore and discover.

    In the end though it is the paintings and drawings  that have to evoke a response without  reference to their original inspiration --although sometimes  titles do offer a gateway into the ideas that  sparked the imagery.