'Visions...'

'Salute', oil on canvas, 200 x 150cms, 2018

Over the summer I have also completed this large painting, provisionally titled ‘Salute’. When I showed it my artist friend, Andrew Smith, he remarked on the Nazi salute quality of the large extended ‘arm’ of the vehicle, which, although not previously thought about by me, it’s an aspect I am now very excited about. It sort of ties in with other ideas I was trying to represent in it, such as it looking like some sort of bleak futuristic landscape populated by these abandoned and redundant, strange looking vehicles, a bit Star Wars/Mad Max. I distorted the colour, using the greens and pinks against the yellow and orange to add to the atmosphere to make it look slightly more unreal and otherworldly, but hopefully not too much so- I see it as a vision more in the not too distant, post-Brexit future.

The idea of a vision brings me neatly to my forthcoming exhibition with Andrew and Hugh Marwood, ‘Visions Of A Free-Floating Island’ at Nottingham’s Surface Gallery, opening on September 14^th. Having now completed this large painting I think it would work well in the show, which has a definite ‘state of the nation’ feel about it,  and in the representation of my own work.