This was an exhibition of two artists’ responses to Hayle estuary; the result of a project that colleague and friend, Liz Luckwell and I worked on. The responses were very different, hers developing into 3D pieces and mine using photopainting. The series of work I produced was called Estuary Skies. Hayle Estuary is a nature reserve that has an intriguing history because of the copper smelting and the old foundry. It is one of those (at least to me) very fascinating places that have sheer natural beauty mixed with small visible reminders of man’s industrial interference. As you walk out towards the sea at low tide it has a moon-walk quality that is difficult to put into words. In my early photographic exploration of the estuary for this project, I was struck by the power of the big, dramatic skies. I wanted to accentuate that drama by combining my mat black-and-white photographs with oil paint and montage. I found the layers I created enabled me to express the quality I sought. I have for a while been experimenting, using my photographs as a foundation and literal support for paintings. My work has often been about layers, in some cases with a play of painted representational images glimpsed through passages of expressive paint-handling that emphasise the content of the painting. In this way the new work seems a natural progression.
