Paul Denham

Abstract Landscape Painting

Born in 1977, Paul grew up in Raby Park near Staindrop where the fields, woods and distant moors of the Peninnes had a profound effect on him. He studied drawing and painting at Bretton Hall College of Art, achieving a BA Honours degree in Fine Art. His paintings begin with a walk on the moor or in the fields and woods near his home where he uses an old woodland cottage as his studio.

Paul starts to paint by applying a ground which he carves linear markings into. These lines give the surface an etched quality which the paint bites into. They represent details like the contours of hillsides, rock forms, animal tracks, stone walls, streams and old mining scars now half reclaimed by nature.

He then allows the work to evolve over this surface through the paint itself, forming the ‘geology’ of markings and glazes which echo a spirit of place. The result is that Paul’s work has a strong sense of what he describes as ‘a memory of landscape’.