Phil Whiting 'In Memory of the Forest' with new paintings by Peter Kettle

About

Sarah Wiseman Gallery is thrilled to present an exhibition by landscape and history painter Phil Whiting and emerging landscape artist Peter Kettle. Both artists create evocative, atmospheric landscapes which ask the viewer to contemplate the land as an emotional place. 
Recently relocated to Oxford, Phil has been working on a new series of paintings that examine both the forests that are a part of real landscape, and the forests of our imagination and myth.  Peter Kettle spends much of his time in his native Wales, observing the landscape, creating expressive, textured paintings. 
Phil Whiting’s work is primarily concerned with observing landscapes that are somehow imbued with historical events and our understanding of these areas of land with this retrospective knowledge. 
In this new series of paintings, Phil Whiting explores the subject of the forest as being both a physical place and a psychological space. Forests are often a setting for fairy stories, or are places filled with mystery and foreboding.
‘These paintings were mostly inspired by my travels through the forests of Europe. Some titles suggest exodus, displacement, abandonment, or loss. Yet other paintings were inspired by forest journeys made closer to home - Wytham Woods or woods by the Ridgeway, for example. For me the forest has many meanings. It is a place of great poetry and metaphor, and yet continues as it did to that little boy all those years ago to both haunt and tantalise me. I can only hope that these paintings will help you sense some of this too.’

Young painter Peter Kettle too is interested in the emotional connection we have with landscape. Setting out on trips around  Wales and other parts of the UK, he spends time exploring and sketching, before returning to his studio to work up paintings using mixed media – painting, often combining materials such as plaster and paint.
Peter is excited to have moved to a new studio in Bristol, which will no doubt see even more exciting developments in this young artist’s work.