Cuillin Bantock: Paintings

The Arena project involves smallish paintings made between 2020 and 2022. The work came about as the result of the loss of a large studio some distance away, by chance coincident with the pandemic and lockdowns. As it happened the painting-surfaces and frames were already prepared and in store. The project involves 34 paintings, and came to a natural conclusion in March 2022.

The images have come about by repeated layers of oil paint on board. The advantage of board as a surface is that it offers the opportunity to restore the original flatness by repeated scraping and sanding. This became a fairly regular practice with these paintings; the final surface is visually quite different from paint on fabric.

An arena is somewhere outside where things happen. These paintings attempt to create outside space/light sensation entirely by tension across the surface, using mostly quite simple. hard-edged colour forms with minimal or no internal modulation. Lifelong familiarity with a particular maritime environment is a constant background presence.

Cuillin Bantock
March 2022

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