David Hinchliffe

I retired from a long career in art education in 2009 and have painted on a full-time basis since that time.

I trained as a fine artist in Manchester and gained an MA at the Royal College of Art. Paintings are mainly in oil and acrylic on canvas, although drawings on-site are usually carried out in a wide range of media. I have exhibited throughout the South West of England and in Rome and in Australia.

I am particularly interested in the balance which takes place between the medium and the image and the way the image is perceived. Most of my work explores this issue through ambiguity and the expressive qualities of paint. Some paintings focus on a particular issue such as pattern, balance, rhythm or surface within the painting; all have colour at their heart.

All my work is based on first-hand observation. I draw to gather information or to develop an idea. For me, painting is a process of sorting out ideas, drawing and refining them. As a result, a painting can take a great deal of time to resolve and often re-drawing is evident in the finished piece. I generally record the process on an iPad and often return to earlier parts of the process as the work progresses.

Space within a painting is often deliberately ambiguous and often constrained. In some cases line is used to define a shape or indicate different viewpoints, in others the image is broken or fragmented. Where figures have been used they are most often generic and provide context, scale or movement.

In much of my work I seek to create a sense of place, not with a single image but by playing with space and the interaction of forms, shapes and colours to create a collage or jigsaw of visual experience.

I have been strongly influenced by the ideas of Peter Lanyon and Richard Diebenkorn. This might not be evident in the work but recently aerial views have provided me with a rich variety of ways of treating a flat plane. Forms operating in shallow depth reveal a huge range of possibilities.