Alan Paterson

Alan was born in Yorkshire in 1944, the son of an engineer. He attended Gresham’s School in Norfolk, where he specialised in art and music. It was there that he developed his enduring love for the broad skies and expansive landscapes of East Anglia.

After a career divided equally between architecture and experimental engineering, Alan turned his focus to painting, with a particular interest in vernacular architecture and its relationship to the English landscape. He set himself the goal of exploring watercolour as the ideal medium to capture the fluid transitions in both built form and natural scenery.

To that end, he has developed a personal technique using dynamic perspective, in which the foreground is enlivened with movement while the background remains still and detailed — echoing the way the eye naturally scans a landscape. This approach has become the hallmark of his work.

Alan lives and works in the seaside town of Eastbourne, Sussex. He is married with two grown-up children, and is a keen yachtsman who regularly sails on the estuaries of Suffolk.

Exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour at the Mall Galleries in London in 2006