Entrance to a Field, nr. Warnford - Acrylic on Paper
I have several interests in painting, but one current and primary issue surrounds the notion of landscape. I suppose, by inclination, I am a painter of landscapes; but I think that our cultural engagement with the land has changed radically over the last half-century or so. My present images set out to reassess our interaction with the landscape of today. I have little artistic interest in the landscape of the past in the sense that I have no attachment to a largely misconceived and nostalgic interpretation of past rural idylls - imagined or real. Landscape - the countryside in which I live - as always, is a landscape of industry and hard work; of mud and machines; of seasons and weather.
The Poet's Garden - Acrylic on Paper
I am also interested in the way in which we read off clues that give identity and understanding to an image. If the clues shown are comprehensive, we give certainty to the interpretation of the image; where the clues are reduced we offer probability to our interpretation, and where they are reduced further, we enter the realm of possibility. It is in this area I like to work.
Scourged Field - Acrylic on Paper
Water colour, and specifically acrylic paint, is an ideal medium for me to apply to form images which stand as metaphors for, say, nature versus the built environment or nature engaging the farmed environment: freely applied paint versus geometric balancing to determine notions of nature wild and nature tamed; freedom and containment. The canvas broadens to allow assessment of opposing or complementary notions of figuration and non-figuration, or observation and imagination, amongst others.
Text and images: Copyright © Tony Hunt 2012
