2018 - 1226 x 244cm
Midi (I-X). Exhibited at Decorex, Syon Park, 2018.
“The Midi fires your senses: makes your hand more agile, your eye sharper, your brain clearer” - Van Gogh in a letter to his brother, Theo.
This fresco polyptych was inspired by resonant places from childhood. By the farm orchards and fields of southwest England and by long, hot, mellow summers spent in rural France.
It draws upon the rich artistic history of France’s south, where it seems there was almost a magnetism in the soil that attracted, amongst others, Cézanne, Picasso and Van Gogh.
It is imbued with the spirit of the powerful, fertile and rugged landscapes of the Midi-Pyrénées and Provence, and the fiery ochre seams and sculptural rock faces of the Bibémus Quarries.
Influenced by the practices in Action Art and Abstract Expressionism, this piece was created in a single intense time period (akin to a traditional fresco painter’s giornata).