120 x 80 cm | 47 x 31 in
Subject: Landscapes & Nature
Tags:
Sea,
Beach,
Horizon,
Coast
Mixed media painting in watercolour ink, French chalk with linseed oil, oil paint and copper inks.
"I use a carefully layered combination of media, 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."
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.