Dominic Vince

Most of the paintings on this site were all painted from drawings made on location. I work in what I think of as the English Post-Cezanne tradition, and although I do not regard my practice as analytical, I aim to paint my sensations as directly as I can without decorative distortions or artful exaggerations.  While I'm looking for an essentially abstract structure its important for me that this structure arises naturally from the experience of the subject. The apparently simple idea is that the direct use of paint and colour can account for a profound visual experience, deepening and developing that experience through the process. We start from a position of necessary naivity, and paint towards a form of realisation. The role of abstraction within the process is one of developing the understanding of what is seen, as well as revealing and clarifying the vision via the unique (and still-evolving) language of painting. Why and how a painting can account so completely for a vision of the world is still a mystery.

Above all my paintings are about visual enjoyment and the celebration of beauty, although my goal is certainly never to make a “beautiful painting.” We are apparently the only creatures who experience beauty and that we do so is surely deeply significant and at the core of what makes us human. In a too-often tragic and cynical world the words of the poet R.S. Thomas;  “…you can witness the extent of the spectrum and grow rich with looking,” are, for me, more than just a consolation.