‘The paintings are of a place where I want to be, and that I want to be at peace with.’
Richard Ballinger’s landscapes are a collage of experienced and half-imagined landscapes to which he returns. Each time he paints, Ballinger starts by drawing directly onto the canvas and a mélange of locations form in his mind to be distilled by the act of painting, ‘I’m deciphering it and simplifying it,’ he says. The stirring impact of the Artist’s style is owed to its economy of line that yields to gauzy interlocking planes of colour. Rejecting naturalism in favour of the use of evocative colours and of tonal shifts to let scenery slowly recede, these images are unique. The deliberately spare structure of each results in serene compositions that are always conversational rather than dogmatic and often prompt an emotional response. ‘Where the road begins is often pretty ambiguous, but it gives just enough suggestion,’ says Ballinger, ‘It gives the viewer a chance to walk through the landscape.’