Although Paul Hamlyn could be called a landscape painter, his paintings have always involved close encounters between the natural and supernatural world. There might be references to marine and plant life, micro-organisms and cosmic phenomena orchestrated into rhythmic association, with each element distinct and sharply focused but also seemingly on the verge of change or transmutation. 

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Alternating between his studio on Shingle Street on the Suffolk coastline and London, Hamlyn comments that: 

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As ever, my heart lies in natural landscapes, whether in Rendelsham Forest, by the North Sea, or in London. I don't feel separate from nature and don't believe an alien would distinguish between human beings and organic forms like trees and stones. 

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I come to each canvas with an idea, but the first mark I make is the real beginning. From there, I follow threads, letting the paintings tell me what to do next; treating the marks themselves as forms in nature. 

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My brain is changing. These paintings follow the changes in my brain. I have developed a more abstract dialogue with my work; it is more colourful, less precisely defined. With these new works, I rely less on the external appearance of things, more on memory and my impressions of the natural world.

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I consider the finished paintings themselves to be natural forms in a landscape.

 

Paul Hamlyn begins work by sketching and taking photographs outdoors. He then takes these quiet fragments of the English countryside to his studio, transporting them through time, and imagination into an unsettling, alien version of his own private world; not so much a place as a state of mind.

 

Michael Richardson

London, March 2022 

 

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