INTRODUCTION
As a painter it is important to have something to say and the task then becomes finding a way to say it. In even simpler terms, deciding what to paint and how to paint. So you’d think by my age that I would have figured all that out long ago and be content with a ”style” that suited my subjects however that has never been the case for me. Until 2005 I was predominantly a studio painter involved mainly with figurative work and still life, never having reacted to the landscape around me, Scotland having been famously described as “grey, green and badly lit”. It was with some surprise therefore that I found myself eager to say something about a landscape which had been the subject of so many other painters’ work, so all I had to do was figure out how to say it – and then I saw the light… literally! It’s true what they say about the south of France: it has a particular quality of light. Painters over the years have made the journey south to discover for themselves what attracted Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Derain, Picasso and even our own Scottish Colourists. They all found something unique about the light and the environment which added to their work and the way they worked. I too made the journey and was inspired to start painting landscape as a result, making the south of France my second home and studio. But is not just the south of France that can boast a definitive quality of light. In my experience most of the Mediterranean European countries have their own unique light qualities. It’s difficult to know whether it might be as simple as the sun being more directly overhead or that the strength of sunlight reflected from ground and buildings make the shade more luminous. Whatever the reason the effect is that the sky seems bluer, the colours stronger and the contrast more intense. The combination of factors might include dappled light through plane trees or shafts of light between buildings all contributing to a sense of time and place, a sense of being there. In my work I strive to capture the essence of that quality of light and environment developing a pictorial language to describe not just the scene but the feeling of the place – that sense of being there. The subject can be quite simple: the bend in a canal, a modest street café or a morning market but it is the effect of the light falling and reflecting that becomes the real subject. My work has become more about finding that language and using it to translate what is seen into a picture which evokes a memory or highlights an effect, to say something about the subject that connects with the viewer by recognition or even shared memory. It is an invitation to read the language and understand the pictorial story with all its abbreviations and punctuations.
I hope you like what I have to say in this exhibition.
Jack Morrocco DA, FRSA
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