Paul Martin

New ways of working and seeing

Over the past year my working process has changed considerably. Having realised that my painting style had become rather stilted, I made a conscious decision in February 2011 to restrict myself to black and white, producing a series of large charcoal drawings of standing stones.

In June 2011 I joined a five day course in mono-printing led by Ron Prokrasso an American artist and master printmaker. His inventive methods of working on a print plate and gentle challenges to my artistic thought processes - allied to seeing the late artworks of Juan  Miro at the Tate - led me to re-thinking how I physically worked with paint and interpreted my subject matter. I began applying paint with different sized pieces of cardboard, spreading thin or thick slabs of paint and scratching back though to mix and shape the colours. I virtually abandoned using brushes accept for splatting paint across the work. The first works to emerge from this method were a series of Provence Spring paintings and one of Er Lannic’s ancient stone circle.

In October 2011 Viv and I visited the pre-historic caves near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne and were totally amazed at the humanity and sophistication of work up to 30,000 years old. This set off a new series of work for me about my experience of seeing and interacting with these ancient images and my empathy as an artist with those who saw then as I do now!