Brian Crouch works in 'series' through related themes. Through the working process he discovers what needs to be made in terms of each idea, be it painting, drawing or three-dimensional construction: sometimes arising out of observations made in and around the Wye Valley where he lives; from experiences of travelling as in the 'Finistere' series of paintings; in the 'Sea-sign' constructions and recently in a series of 'assemblages' which he calls 'The studio recycled'.

Brian says of his work:

I live and work in a place where I am immersed in a rich and varied landscape surrounding house and studio; the garden as well as wide vistas of hill and sky beyond. Much of my work is based on on the experience of these things expressed through the processes of painting.

I have always related to the ideas, formal strengths and expressiveness of good abstract art and for a number of years my paintings were completely abstract, often geometry-based.

However, living where I do, I have felt the need to draw upon the vitality of imagery to be found through natural forms and patterns of growth, aiming at some kind of synthesis or at least a meeting of these concerns, like two halves of an equation which come together in a new reality through the painting, growing towards an independent existence, a particular visual 'fact'.

I begin a painting, often in a freely improvisatory fashion, obviously with a particular theme in mind, but with only a general feeling about the structure or final form it will take. I try to find, for instance in the 'Gardens', rhythms which suggest growth as if they grow in their own right. The work thus evolves as a plant grows; colours conjure up the play of light and shadow; spaces are suggested by a continuously shifting web of colour in paint, from dense to transparent.

I aim for a painting where there are no defined and stable solids or voids, but a constant interchange of both possibilities; a flux of colour where qualities of paint create sensations of space, close-up and vista. I try to feel and use the medium; paint, charcoal or whatever, as a living thing. The painting is finished when fresh spontaneous beginnings allowed to stand because they seem right are reconciled with more worked-over and developed areas which are adjusted and revised often over many months.

In parallel with painting on a flat surface, I also explore ideas and structure in a different form by making things. The recent 'assemblages' and constructions (terms first applied to Picasso's three-dimensional Cubist work which I greatly admire), look by their very nature different from the paintings. They are more like improvised wall-hung objects, or three-dimensional paintings usnig materials and colour, but the process of trying to find a synthesis of image and structure is exactly the same. A recent series which I call 'The studio recycled' uses discarded bits and pieces retrieved from the studio floor, hence the title. Finding and putting together unlikely combinations of material is a stimulus and a technical challenge where the structure is a physical one. The titles of the individual pieces are, I hope, evocative rather than descriptive.

BRIAN CROUCH, 2006

for Brian's writings on art visit www.artessays.net