These are images of places I know, places I have been in. Places of my childhood, and places I have returned to. Physically and online. I’ve appended quotes from J.A. Baker but only because, reading his work, it feels as though he has given me a way into Essex that feels close to the way I experienced it. He writes not like a child, but with the immediacy we associate with childhood.
They are worked in an acrylic medium into which pure pigments are stirred. Each image has many layers, and many are thin and watery. But Essex is watery, often indistinct. And flat. Gleaning a moment from this shimmer of transience is a challenge.
“The heavy sun pressed down; heat smote upward from the shimmering road. A warm breeze stifled in the solid trees. A fume of summer coiled upon the fields.” J.A.Baker. The Hill of Summer (1969)
“The tall grass on the slope of the sea-wall is hissing in the wind and bending away to the west. It has a dry smell, like a distant fire. It feathers the blue light of the sky.” J.A. Baker. The Hill of Summer (1969)