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From a purely physical point of view it is painting. My present medium is acrylics on canvas or paper. I work from life, sourcing landscapes and seascapes. I am catching up on the views I missed out on during ten years working in Düsseldorf.
Though my painting style has been described as loose and bold, in some instants, I still consider it figurative or academic. I use views that please and interest me to look at. I attempt to make these visible to someone else by depicting them as accurately as I can in a single sitting.
I thoroughly enjoy trying to capture the atmosphere of what I see and feel, the sky, the land, the light, and the weather. I am trying to communicate the place, the day and the time. I crop the landscape into multi-paneled pieces to accentuate natural features and challenge my own ability as a painter. Despite all my best efforts some pieces arrive home at the end of the day bordering on abstract.
My work at the moment could be overlooked as being just landscape and being safe, but for me it poses many questions about painting, about art. For example understanding the fine line between figurative and abstract.
I will be painting a particular view and through the weather, my choice of composition, or my inability to depict accurately on the day the resulting picture looks quite abstract. When I get home I cannot look at it; I feel I have missed my target. Whereas others love these "abstract" pieces it takes me months to come around to the work. What is interesting is while the last thing I set to do was paint an "abstract" and yet the result has obvious merit as a painting, as art.
Rod Coyne, 2001