PIPPA DARBYSHIRE

Personal statement

' The Pictorial Elements of Light and Space. '

Now that I am living in the ' Baie de Somme ' I regularly paint seascapes from Le Crotoy. In the winter when the weather is bad I paint from my car. Recently I have started painting large seascapes in the studio from sketches I make on site.

I often search for hours, sometimes days for a composition from the horizontal lines of sand and sea. When I find something I draw it on paper and make copious notes and personal references as an ' aide memoir ' before transposing it to a large canvas as soon as I return to the studio. I usually work for three or four sessions until I am happy that I have created a pictorial harmony equivalent to that I saw on the beach.

I work with a limited palette because I believe that it helps the unity of the picture. Recently my seascapes have almost become studies in ultra marine and raw umber with tints of primaries and white. The compositional opportunities are endless as tide and the light are changing all the time. I find the concentration becomes all absorbing so that the paintings are not so much about the subject as ' meditations on a theme '.

I do not try to evoke the elements of nature but to eliminate all detail and smooth out brush strokes so as not to distract from the compositon or to become too figurative.

I use the same soft pallet with my still life. The objects I paint are not intended to mean anything specific. They are chosen unconsciously in a Jungian sense from familiar objects that surround me in my studio and I try not to analyse my choice. I spend many hours placing things on the table in a soft northern light before I begin painting. I am fortunate that each morning a beautiful soft northern light floods through my studio window. I disguise the object and diffuse the light by mantling veils of white muslin.