The interpretation of landscape through colour is my preoccupation as a painter. I have lived in Cambridge for the greater part of my adult life and so am very familiar with fen and coastal landscape. Light predominates in this part of England.
This is one of the few paintings I have made which takes darkness as its subject. I saw the total eclipse of the sun on August 11 th 1999 in Cornwall , within the penumbra of the spectacle. The sky was overcast so there was little to be seen of the eclipse itself, but the shadow was profound.
The painting is built up of layers of translucent colour; the palette includes Venetian Red, Indigo, Permanent Mauve, Winsor Green, Purple Madder, Payne's Grey and Vermilion. Using a measure of the Fibonacci series the vertical lines suggest the movement of the shadow as it moved rapidly across the land.