Lewis Noble - White Peak, Dark Peak

About

In the artists words: 

I have lived and worked in Derbyshire for over twenty years and it is now very much home to me and my family. For this exhibition, I have painted and sketched from the diverse landscape of Derbyshire's peak District. The southern limestone area known as White Peak and the northern gritstone Dark Peak.

The White Peak is the more gentle landscape around Dovedale and Wolfscote Dale. The river flowing over the weirs at Milldale and Bradford Dale are particular favourites of mine.

The northern peak is wilder, around Kinder, Edale and Mam Tor. A climb up Jacob's Ladder (a steep footpath on Kinder Scout ) is rewarded with panoramic views.

Working outside is a key part of my work. Painting from the landscape allows a freedom to experiment in a painterly way while retaining a solid foundation in observation. Combining the individual properties of different materials (watercolour, gouache, acrylic) provides a lot of scope for experimentation.

I try to make paintings which stand in for the landscape itself. The process of building many layers of paint over time, eroding, scratching and repainting, has echoes in the way the landscape is made. In the studio, working mostly with oil, I constantly refer to the many small paintings, sketches and collages I make while outside. These are not photographic frozen moments but paintings which contain the time it took to make them.

Although they are very much images of the real, earthy landscape, I attempt to walk a tightrope between representational and expressive painting to convey a landscape that is still happening.

LEWIS NOBLE, 2017