110 x 90 cm | 43 x 35 in
Subject: Landscapes & Nature
Tags:
Industrial
Original mixed media painting on Canvas.
"I use a carefully layered combination of Watercolour Ink, French Chalk with Linseed Oil, Oil Paint and Copper Inks. I work from paper sketches made en plein air and often take canvases to the location to lay down the watercolours. I then finish the painting and layering of mixed media in the studio. I have been painting and sketching the Port Talbot Steelworks for 3 years now and the compositional elements and movement of the town make it a remarkable location to paint in. I was inspired by L.S Lowry paintings of Northern England factories and wanted to interpret welsh industry in my own way. I visited Port Talbot for years throughout my childhood and feel perpetually inspired to create new methods and processes in painting the landscape. The Steelworks is an iconic landmark on the Wales Coastal Path and an important chapter in the story of welsh industry."
Kettle’s work has the surfaces of well-worn exterior walls, buffeted and corroded with the appearance of having withstood the effects of time and weather – a technique that gives his work an enlivening combination of stoicism and nostalgia.
If one glanced at Kettle’s work for a matter of seconds, it might seem abstract. Quickly, however, a landscape unfolds. A deep green often streaks across the top of the canvas. The implication is the ocean or a night sky, either seems applicable. Look further and we might detect a sort of dance. Each painting has its own internal rhythm. Paint is smeared across the canvas, the trace of a palette knife or similar instrument visible. Drips, drags and smears give the painting body. No wonder Kettle has titled his recent paintings as a sequence of sea shanties. The paintings act as placeholders for songs, for shanties. Human bodies are absent and the paintings are stronger for it; they embody the aftermath of the party, the event, the song. Here, we might draw a comparison with Giorgio De Chirico’s cities, made all the stranger by the lack of human presence. And lastly, a note on Kettle himself. A keen mountaineer and traveller, his artist photo depicts him setting out camping equipment on a snowy mountain. We see a backpack and beside it, three small packages in red, yellow and green. Look at the paintings and these three colours clustered together are a constant. Another trace of human activity, in this case, likely Kettle himself.