Dominic Vince - Recent Paintings

These paintings have all been made over the past four years, and are centred mostly on the areas of St Abbs and Staithes. Repeated trips with my family have embedded these places as parts of my life and built a growing, personal familiarisation with them. On these trips I will draw as much as I can (with one eye on my boys so they don't fall off a cliff) and aim to paint from the drawings when I return home to Hebden Bridge. Staithes offers endless variations of cubist arrangements of houses (not unlike Hebden Bridge) crushed in amongst the vice of the cliffs, and seen against the flat plane of the sea. In St Abbs I am constantly drawn to the clear geometry of the sea wall thrown in amongst the craggs and rocks that surround it. They are both undoubtedly pretty and scenic places but also retain the rugged, harshness of human activity exposed to the elements.

Partly my paintings are always based in the mysterious act of seeing, and the even more mysterious act of painting a visual experience. Visual excitement demands a drawn response, and the intention is that the end result should match, explain and express the stimulation of the thing seen while also arriving at an identity that is unique and self sufficient in it's own right. How autonomous a painting becomes in relation to it's subject varies from artist to artist; we all have different priorities; for myself I regard my work as painted towards abstraction rather than being "semi-abstract." I believe it's always clear or at least clearish what it is represented in the paintings. For me it's important that the abstraction is found naturally within the subject while also enhancing the sense of the whole scene, rather than being applied to it for some slick idea about "good painting."

Sometimes a painting might develop too far away from it's original source and will need bringing back again, others will be too topographical and won't interest me as a image, but it's definitely important to me that my painting of St Abbs reminds of the time and place where I had the initial experience. There's some kind of sweet spot/hinterland I'm searching for that will suprise me as an invented image while also acting as a conduit for the vitality of the subject felt in the magic of a moment. For instance I would love to use more plastic invented colour, but my attachment to atmospheric colour and light is too strong; it's part of my love for the subject.

It's impossible to pack all one's visual sensations and ideas into one painting so often an unintended series will arise; one painting might have gone as far as I can take it but it doesn't contain the essence of what moved me to make the thing in the first place; which gives me an opportunity to have another go. As I love what I paint and only paint what I love, this is an exciting prospect, not a frustrating one.