Ian Mowforth

Ian Mowforth brings his lush landscape paintings to our Lower Gallery.

Ian Mowforth investigates edges in his current body of work, the meeting of colours and forms against one another in a landscape setting. Mowforth’s interest in the changing light and the textures of seasons continues, and his exploration of calligraphic mark-making is paramount.  The building up of surfaces and textures (with or without the addition of mediums) in the paint allows him to create his own sense of place. Many artists have explored this idea, but he pushes this idea further using contemporary/appropriate technology to facilitate its making and development.

Mowforth takes dozens of images that he can collage together in the studio in order to re-examine the scene that had sparked the initial interest. He spends many hours referring to the motif as he recreates his own version in the studio. He doesn’t copy the image mark for mark but uses the original as an initial way of arranging the positive and negative forms on to the surface before the physical act of painting takes over. If Turner or Constable had access to an iPhone and a printer, Mowforth thinks they may well have been generating the staring points for pictures in the same way that he chooses to.

Mowforth doesn’t draw out and paint in. He generates the structure and composition within the painting itself. It grows organically from initial compositional markers. He generally paints onto a coloured ground on the smoothest oil primed linen. This surface is soft and enables the quality of the paint to create the marks Mowforth needs to make the space, like visual clues that you find in the original scene. The paint sits up on the surface of the canvas and the edges of the paint catch the light which allows him to begin to create a visual tonal reality. Thanks to the contrasting coloured ground, the upper most marks on the surface allow the painting be read as a 3D space. 

Mowforth hopes that you’ll enjoy looking at the images that he’s endeavoured to bring inside from the outside world and begin to feel the atmosphere of the works.

To learn more about Ian and his work, please visit his website or his Instagram.