Paul Finn

I am a landscape painter.  I work from observation but I am not an en plein air painter, nor would I say that my work is entirely realistic.  Working initially from direct observation using ink, graphite and charcoal, allows me the freedom to paint away from the landscape in my studio.  In this way I try to give a deeper account of the world and my responses to it. 

Drawings are works in their own right and are in no way plans for paintings.  My paintings are not made to a prescribed system, I want to work out the paintings as they appear during their making.  This means that I rework and repaint the work many times until it is “right". 

Primarily my interest is in the depiction of space.  By this I mean two things : the spatial divisions on the flat surface of the canvas, and the illusory space created by colour, composition and scale change.  I want to recollect and recreate my initial observations , joys and emotions which I experience when I an in the landscape itself