In Conversation with Ian Newman

3 mins with artist Ian Newman [IDN]:

[A.I.]  Can you talk a bit about these paintings. 

[IDN] These series of oils on watercolour paper were called the Dawn & Dusk, alongside the Terrain, Twilight Zone & Estuary series. I had paid a visit to river Deben near Woodbridge and the Stour estuary in Suffolk [in 2004].

[A.I.] Looking at the series as a whole, they form an exploration of viewpoints & temporal nature of the environment. Tell us how you work through these elements.

[IDN] The rich silt mud [from the river] which was revealed as the tide went out coupled with the meandering excavations/erosion caused over time by this process had a richness of colour and cyclical seasonal motion that had poetic connotations. As the daylight wained and colours became difficult to see or became almost monochromatic, other possibilities revealed themselves and I felt the subject had a number of possibilities to be out worked. 

It always proves itself to be the case that the rich diversity of the actual world around me with its sounds, potential to be touched, constant changes of viewpoint and those unexpected moments when taste is sharpened impacting on the senses impels a response that by its very nature has to be independent of them for the picture to work in its own right and exist as an independent entity.

[A.I.] How did you begin to work with the sensory elements of the river landscape.

[IDN] I wanted to stress the weight, density and tone of the mark being used. In my mind this paired down the viewers initial reading of the image to being about a subtle nuanced surface. A sense of openness and space with floating forms gradually coalescing was sought after hence the title of the works.

All images courtesy of Ian Newman.

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