Martyn Lucas

When a painting is ‘on hold’, then I might switch to collage, which essentially involves working with found images – quite often a vintage postcard, cut up paintings, old books and colour swatches. The postcards contain memories in a particular way; either from my own visits to places and bought by me as a child or collected as an adult of places that I remember. There is a conversation between the two techniques, and one informs the other.  Both involve a slow process.

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Small scale and often richly coloured, these collages initiate a conversation about landscape, memory and human intervention. The materials of their making (found images, painted brush marks and flat colour swatches) construct an abstracted scene; a disrupted view, suggestive of stasis but also moving through. Often worked on pages from old art books or vintage postcards, two or three hard-edged, geometric elements are introduced which generate a kind of narrative. They might have their origin in my noticing a bright pink wrapped hay bale in a field or a red brick wall in front of some trees. The shapes enter like characters on a stage, playing out in front of a landscape backdrop. The works are small, simple and can look effortless, but take time to resolve. Compositional balance and visual pleasure, engaging eye and imagination.

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