Artist
Statement:
I am a landscape painter interested in places which show evidence of man’s
passing; in particular ancient sites (as sources of earth energy sometimes
discovered by dowsing) and ley lines, pathways, ploughing and tilling
marks, abandoned settlements, lines, scrapings, circles, paths, edges
and clumps.
This marked landscape conveys to me a sense of the passing of time and
of age which we associate with belonging to a place. The sense that what
we see is part of a continuing cycle without end or beginning.
As a painter I am trying to convey the power and the 'depth' of landscape
and I feel particularly in tune with the sentiments of
Cecil Collins ( 1908 -1989), when he says of his paintings:
‘the seeing of things and the seeing into things’.
I would like to feel that my paintings could convey this sense of exploration
and revelation.
I find that I am more and more drawn to working within the boundary of
the Stroud Five Valleys where I live, and places - Cranham, Sheepscombe,
Slad, Pitchcombe, Brimpsfield and Caudle Green, places for me of great
mystery and powerful emotion, where I feel a strong sense of time in the
shapes of fields, the markings of plough and foot and the colour and passing
of the seasons of planting, growth and death.
As with all creative people I am influenced by the work and thoughts of
others. I would be totally lost without the poetry of T.S.Eliot, the paintings
of Samuel Palmer, Cecil Collins, Emile Nolde, Tapies and Mark Rothko and
the music of John Tavener, Peter Maxwell Davis, Strauss and Sibelius.
Robert
Straley
For
sales, commissions and to send comments to the artist.
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