Views from Princes Pier
- Julian Twigg

When you return time and again to paint at the same location – as Julian Twigg has been returning to Princes Pier over the last 4 years – your constancy is rewarded. Over the course of repeated visits to the same vantage point, the view’s immutables become fixed in the mind’s eye. The buildings. The pier itself. The shipping lane markers. The arc of the bay. Each of these various unchanging forms and shapes settles in the subconscious and forms a template or pattern, as familiar and easy to conjure up as the rooms of a childhood home. This frees the conscious artistic mind to address the things that really matter to any painter of landscapes or maritime subjects – the things that change and the way we depict them in art.
Accruing such a deep familiarity with this setting has, for Julian, been very liberating, artistically speaking. There is a great freedom in being able to roll up to a location, and “just paint”. Instead of seeking out points of reference, the eye can roam free, searching for variety and nuance. Shipping traffic, bird life, weather, cloud patterns, changes in light and colour – all aspects of the ever-changing vista glide forward to offer themselves as subject matter. Allied with this is the confidence that comes from being familiar and settled in the location – the confidence to take risks and go in new directions with shape and gestural marks and paint application, the confidence to try new approaches with colour and atmosphere, the boldness that grows from mastery of a subject through long observation and repetition. I am sure you agree that this confidence and boldness have added a new dimension to the works that you see in this collection.

– Martin Hore, 2021