huw heywood paintings
My ancestors were Welsh seafarers, captains of the deep ocean barques. I think this must be where my wanderlust has its roots, as well as my lifelong quest to understand and explain the forces of nature which shape our world.
My work has its roots in abstract art, recalling the feeling of a place or a condition and employing medium and technique to express it. The paintings begin as ideas, working in sketchbooks to establish the varying, essential elements which contribute to the spirit of a place. I work with observed colours, structures and compositions to capture the emotional and poetic nature of locations. While the subjects may be place-specific the message about the world and our position in it is universal, and I hope the paintings can be interpreted at many scales and through the lens of any viewer's individual landscape memory. Most are specifically chosen fragments of a landscape, each telling a much bigger tale.
The finished works are painted in acrylic, on paper and on unprimed canvas. Acrylic is used in fluid, translucent washes and in opaque fields of colour.