Suburban Idyll Painting

The 'Killing Time' series is based on Simon Armitage's brilliant poem of the same title, commissioned by the Millennium Committee. The thousand line poem is divided into sections, which explore different aspects of man's relationship with his fellow man, and the state of civilisation at the beginning of the 21st Century. 'Suburban Idyll' is an imagined garden setting. The poem provided the springboard for my painterly investigations. The paintings are door sized stretched canvases, unframed, featuring impasto oil paint on a thin acrylic base. The preliminary acrylic painting lays down accidental marks to contribute to the surface richness, and is overlaid with a gradual build up of oil paint. The colour themes and mark making seek to reflect a sense of space, rhythm and an emotional charge in the individual works.