A selection of evocative landscape paintings in West Dorset, including views from Eggardon Hill, views across the Bride Valley, into West Milton, and South Bowood.
PRESS RELEASE
"The Marshwood Vale & Beyond 2023"
Bridport Contemporary, 11 Downes Street, Bridport DT6 3JR
Open Weds & Sat. 10am to 4pm
Kit Glaisyer has built a growing reputation for his evocative landscape paintings, centred in the distinctive West Dorset landscape. His work combines both traditional and contemporary landscape painting techniques, deeply informed both by his early plein air painting practise as a teenage, and then five years as an Abstract painter in London. Photography and Cinema have also served as key influences, helping to inform both the panaromic format of many of his landscapes, as well as incorporating copious photographic references while utilising Photoshop with both digital & traditional collage in his preparatory sketches.
Kit's interest in the landscape tradition starts with the Dutch 17th Century artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema, and was then developed further by his interest in Romantic artists in the 18th and 19th Centures, including John Constable, William Turner, Casper David Friedrich, and the Hudson River Valley artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Albert Bierstadt.
Kit also engages with the French Barbizon School and Fontainebleau painters, from Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot to Claude Monet, as well as the Post Impressionists, in particular, Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
Having grown up a a plein air watercolour painter alongside his father, a very talented amateur artist, Kit then extended his practice into plein air oil painting. But then, following Art College at first Bournemouth & Poole, and then Farnham (West CAD), Kit moved to London and had a seminal encounter with the Gerhard Richter exhibition "Painting in the 90's" at the Anthony D'Offay gallery in 1995. The experience pivoted Kit to Abstract painting for five long years, during which time he avoided all objective subject-matter and instead worked on a series of 'Process Painting', exploring the material qualities of oil paint, colour, texture, layering, and visual impact, that allowed for a deeply subjective series of works.
Following a move to West Dorset in 1998, Kit began a return to landscape painting, first with a series of plein air paintings, followed by a series of paintings of a local landmark, the Cafe Royal. He then began to paint the local landscape, combining his plein air studies, that involves considerable location research, with a new studio-based practise that involves a patient process of building up of dozens of glazes of oil paint over several weeks or months.
This series of Cinematic Landscape paintings started in 2006, and continues to this day, informed by a contiguous series of private commissioned landscapes paintings across the West Country. Views from hillforts tend to drive his practice, with series of paintings from Allington, Lewesdon, and Bulbarrow Hills.
During Lockdown in 2020, Kit started a series of paintings of the view from Eggardon Hill, an ancient hill fort a few miles to the east of Bridport. This has continued to be his main focus, inspiring many related paintings that record a wide range of impressions throughout the seasons, from wild winter storms that stretch across the valleys below, to gentle misty spring days. parched fields in high summer, and glowing autumnal evenings.
Open Wednesdays & Saturdays
10am to 3pm
Bridport Contemporary Gallery
11 Downes Street
Bridport
Dorset DT6 3JR