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Paul Stringfellow: Places and Images to share
4th June to 12th July 2019
Open evening 4th June 7-9pm
Painting for me is feeling a connection and a sharing with others. Many of my paintings are of places that I have explored along with my family, returned too, become intimately acquainted with and loved over time.
I gain enormous pleasure from exploring and discovering depth and textures cast through light. When out walking I look for qualities that provide a sense of adventure and mystery, maybe an enticing door, hidden path or a distant shaft of light suggesting a tantalising twist in the landscape. I look for views that create an interesting composition with shadows and exaggerated textures and colours.
For me light is all and determines the mood of a picture, whether it is the sun bleached and colour vivid Mediterranean or the quiet English countryside with its outbuildings and fauna that are lit up by morning or the low setting sun. When a scene touches me, almost like a piece of music, I crave to share the empowering feelings with others. I find it an extremely humbling experience sometimes when I come across some scenes. I need to stop, maybe sit down on a nearby bench or grassy bank and just absorb it and feel a connection to it.
After leaving school with my rebelliously claimed A level Art, my creative aspirations were dampened by having to take on anything that would give me a reliable income. However, through an opportunity I was given, I found I had an aptitude to computer development that I pursued in various guises up to my retirement. Not something you may think that is very creative! but I always found myself in a role in a business where computer technology was first being introduced. Here I could creatively find solutions that empowered people in some way (something of which I suspect I still want to give through my paintings). It is this, supplemented with the occasional watercolour picture I painted with my family vacations in Cornwall, which kept the threads of my creative spirit alive until my retirement.
Retirement can be a beautiful thing! Now I am retired I am free to take time, visually explore and take in my surroundings again. I have discovered Art Societies to join that I have personally found a great inspiration that gives me the impetus, confidence and opportunity to be able to share my drive for connecting through art with others.
Recently I have undertaken commissions (mutual gifts really) from friends and family in which I have recorded in some small way a poignant time and place… Lulworth Castle for a marriage, A beach in Crete for a first family holiday and simply a painting of couples’ first home.
Currently I am working frantically to put into reality the ideas for paintings that I have built up over time and now want to share with you in my first exhibitions.
Come join me and take time to discover, enjoy and share your surroundings with others.