Lake Gwynant

Peter Kettle

25 x 20 cm | 9 x 7 in


Subject: Landscapes & Nature
Tags: Water, Lake, Refracted Light, Texture, Study


Original painting in mixed media 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 try to interpret the rhythms and mood of the landscape. The sketches are fluid and free responses to what is happening in front of me. I paint with energy and try to capture the fleeting nuances of subject. When sketching, It is more important for me to act impulsively and then replicate that feeling back in the studio. A series of paintings looking at the changes in light across the majestic setting of Snowdonia. This area always brings an overwhelming feeling of reverence for the welsh landscape. Spending time here and seeing how the light transforms the landscape hour by hour is for me a perfect day."


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Peter Kettle

See inside the studio

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.


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Lake Gwynant by Peter Kettle

£550.00