oil on canvas,
102cm x 82cm,
Iain White, 2015,
£385
This abstracted landscape was inspired by the work of Kit Barker (1916 - 1988). Like his contemporaries, William Scott, Roger Hilton and Peter Lanyon, Kit Barker had found his own painting language by the late 1950s. Although he remained a painter of landscape, his pictures retain an ambiguity, a property that appeals to me immensely.
There is always a tension between recognisable image and the pre-eminence of the process of painting itself, the mark making and the use of colour. Like Nicolas de Staël whose approach he followed, his composition, use of colour, and the relation of landscape to his brush marks characterise his style. Although his influence is apparent, in my work here, the rectangular blocks of colour seen in works such as Harbour wall, Navigation Light (1960) are absent and his typical horizontal horizon line is replaced by the line of the Foinne Bheinn (Foinaven) ridge.
Ref: 48
