John Potter
I am an abstract artist whose paintings are responses to my immediate surroundings. For the past several years I have been inspired by a small section of the River Thames close to where I live, which I walk each day to observe the changing landscape.
Most usually created in series, the primary focus of the paintings has always been expression through colour. They draw on Wordsworth’s concept of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’ – a response to a place and time which is created only after the experience has occurred. My responses are paintings made in the studio where I can plan, compose and develop the way in which my experience is transmuted into paint. Beginning with a specific location or experience in mind I select a colour palette and build up multiple layers of paint, moving between areas of impasto and delicate washes of colour, repeatedly thickening and thinning each layer until a complex balance of surfaces, colours and forms is reached.
The works are a form of self-expression but relate to universal notions of time, memory, place and the self. Whilst they are rooted in my own direct experience, they never have a specific meaning but remain ambiguous so that the viewer is free to find their own interpretation and explore their own response regardless of their background, age, religion or beliefs.
@johnpotterartist
