Horizon (Blue) Painting

Martyn Lucas is a freelance artist, curator and educator, and in addition to his painting practice, works on projects with artists and communities in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Since graduating in Fine Art from Reading University, he has exhibited across the UK, in Canada and the USA. He has curated a wide range of gallery and public art projects, and for ten years managed the Turnpike Gallery, Leigh. Martyn’s recent practice has returned to landscape, and the use of watercolour, pastel and collage. Works are derived from painting on site, from sketchbook images and photographs, and memories of regular travel through English landscapes. The Pennines, Yorkshire Dales, Lake District and Scottish Borders have provided starting points. The ‘Difficulty of Landscape’ series includes visual disruptions to the scene. They are about painting as much as place; about the qualities of mark making, light and composition as much as depicting land and sky. They are about the process of looking, of finding a ‘view’, but also glimpsing an obscured landscape through a train or car window, or the changing clouds beyond some roof tops. There is a tension between the traditional ‘sublime’ and a modern-day sense of transformation of landscape through human activity.