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Contemporary British artist Kieran Stiles’ paintings of the Cornish coastline, made under varied weather conditions, are vibrant and evocative. These variations on a theme pay homage to this beautiful and rugged part of the world, where the artist trained, and to which he frequently returns.
"I'm making paintings, not of the landscape, but what the landscape feels like to be in. The visual subject is just a reference point, a catalyst, I think the work has more integrity that way. To paint one’s subject in a photographically realistic way, I feel is a complete mis- representation of the way humans experience things visually. As I sit on a cliff top I am aware, of not one single, but many things. I glance up to see an encroaching swathe of cloud, I look down at my brushes, or to eat a sandwich, and every time I look back at my subject, it has changed, as it must, because it is nature. I am experiencing thousands of tiny visual moments, and I interpret them over a protracted period according to any number of subjective or emotional criteria. If I am lucky, a successful painting will incorporate all these things, and often only have a loose association to the kind of image a camera might collect”
The paintings amply show Stiles’ abiding fascination with colour and delicate tone balance, and are full of curious touches and surprising textures, but the work also represents the culmination of a long period of experimentation with new techniques which allow for much more vigorous mark-making, and a richer, more subtle interplay of colour. The result is a startling liberation of mark and line, In contrast to the deliberately restrained mark-making of earlier works. As the laconic titles suggest, this work is not strictly observational, but elemental and emotional; an attempt to see nature pared-down and raw, unencumbered by human concerns and agendas.
Shannon Harris July 07