Featured Image: Bishopstone, Sussex, 1972

Bishopstone, Sussex 1972 Oil on canvas 30.5 x 40.5 cm   ​

This work is from a rather unsettled period in my life. I had lost confidence in my abstract work, and was doing quite a few small-scale figurative drawings and paintings, mainly landscapes.  This painting was based on a black and white photograph and sketches I made on the spot, near my parents’ house at the time in Bishopstone, a village between Newhaven and Seaford on the south coast of England. The area in the foreground had been a cricket pitch, and the wooden building on the left the pavilion, now demolished. I seem to remember that there was a small hut, possibly a toilet, hidden in the large bush. I was interested in the formal contrast/connection between the pavilion, the bush, the sign in the distance, and the path through the long grass leading to the road climbing the hill on the right. But I was also trying to capture the atmosphere of the place, probably influenced by the paintings of Edward Hopper. I never finished the painting, but I like to think it has a certain atmosphere.