Ruth Stage NEAC

Throughout my career, my landscape painting has involved an investigation of the properties of egg tempera on gesso board.

I use the quality of this medium to portray encounters within a range of contrasting landscapes, in both rural and urban areas. When it comes, inspiration often takes me by surprise. The subjects within this exhibition include footprints in the evening sunlight on a Cornish beach, ornamental grasses illuminated by the setting sun at the Horniman Museum garden, a group of seed heads on a frosty morning in Dulwich Park, an intricate rockface in Robin Hood’s Bay.

Often featuring the patterns created through the effects of light on branches and foliage, or silhouetted against the sky, the resulting work often has a cinematic quality. Patterns which are closer to the picture plane help draw attention across the surface, moving from the ground up to the horizon.

The things I love to paint are full of rhythm, pattern and shapes, however I punctuate this with surprise elements: a figure in the waves, an intense rich violet in a shadow, a playful and unexpected yellow. I feel this approach gives the work an individuality.

How does light fall on the water? How can I replicate this seemingly infinite distance or make pictorial sense of a tangled thicket of brambles? These are questions which have been asked whilst creating this exhibition.