Max Naylor - Headlands

About

Only a practiced hand and a mind rich with fresh experience could so fluidly conjur these imaginary vistas. The speed of execution - more than a sheer demonstration of talent - forces quick, intuitive decision making, with a degree of playfulness; parts of the images logically cohere and seem referent to some particular reality, whilst others dissolve and reform through joyful gestural marks.

Each work has a sense of time which is not related to the nostalgic associations of landscape, but the chopped, synthesised time of modern life. A narrative movement through each image feels natural, yet is undermined by a confusion of perspectives and the free interplay between the familiar and the exotic. 

Are we leaving the city, or arriving? In these works we are never certain; caught in a whirling oscillation between the urban and rural that rejects resolution. It could be a suburban nightmare, but it has the feeling of a daydream, where paradox is accepted and every strange thing fits happily together without need to justify itself by anyone else's rule.