MARK ABDEY
Painter

"Dawn to Dusk" Exhibition at Lantic Gallery
7th - 23rd September 2007

Mark Abdey seeks to show the contrast between the wild and the tame in the Devon landscape: the vastness of the open spaces, the ruggedness of the lonely stretches of coastline, and a more intimate exploration of the softer agricultural land surrounding his Mid Devon home.

 The need to produce a visual response to the land, sea and sky has been an enduring theme. From an early age, growing up near the banks of the Thames in Berkshire with its gentle landscape, he was aware of the effects of light and the difficulty of recording it on paper. More recently, a strong desire for change led him to turn from watercolour to oil paint and palette knife, and as he began working on boards measuring feet rather than inches, a transformation began.

Breaking free from the need to attend to detail led to the adoption of a darker, richer palette in order to concentrate on atmosphere and the powerful effects of light. The starting point is figurative, but the work can often move towards abstraction, capturing an immediate, intuitive response to a subject. Mark's paintings are generally completed in a single session and, highly critical of his work, he will often scrape away a day's unresolved work rather than risk overworking a painting.