Geoff Hands’ recent paintings explore sweeping landscapes and more intimate, overlooked spaces, combining direct observation with improvisation, colour and richly textured surfaces.

Geoff envisages the whole landscape as the Hortus Conclusus of the natural world that can enable the artist to paint freely. Developing imagery in the studio from walking and drawing directly in the landscape he allows a certain degree of improvisation and engagement with the qualities of colour relationships, heavy and light painterly surfaces and compositional invention. This working methodology enhances his feelings both about the landscape as subject and painting as process, wherein permission is given to invent and improvise as necessary - but with a certain degree of disciplined decision making.

He recently commented that: “Some aspects of cultural notions of the landscape as being a space to pass through or to visit as a special treat are fine, but there’s a universe at our feet and before our eyes wherever we may be, which is celebrated by the Landscape Tradition in painting. I must have unconsciously sensed this as a young art student and I continue to explore this territory as my lifetime’s project.”

 Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to pick up and view a small selection of sketchbooks and to read poem-like texts that also develop from the artist’s walks. Geoff Hands is based at the Phoenix Art Space in Brighton and has taught at several institutions in Sussex, including Northbrook and West Dean College