Hastings 2004

I gave up lecturing at University College Chichester at the end of 2003 to be able to concentrate on re-establishing myself as a practicing artist. I moved to Hastings, East Sussex, where I found the dynamic visual seafront town and colourful people a new source of visual stimulus. After a spending February - April walking and drawing around Hastings every day and then making small watercolours, gouaches and acrylics, I was desperate to to make some larger more ambitious works in oils. I developed a preoccupation with the sensibilities and choreography of queuing, coupled with the quirky pagan rituals of this extraordinary seaside town. Everywhere you walk in Hastings you are confronted with the sea along with dramatic changes in height and scale. My year in Hastings came to and end when I got a job at Oxford Brookes in January 2005.