TOM MABON: SOUTHERN LANDS

The room that serves as a studio seems quite empty. The pictures made during the past two years, recently collected by a cheery van driver about my age, wearing shorts. The temperature outside is -6 degrees. Ironically I am left with a work ‘in progress’ on the easel, a winter landscape of Shetland, and my thoughts turn to Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow. It’s how I work; memory, image, connection. It often takes time for ideas to filter through and there are many false starts. The painting ‘At the Summer’s Height’ brings together a couple of drawings from a sketchbook. Mont St. Victoire was drawn as I waited for a bus outside the Victor Vasarely museum in Aix, while the window is from a drawing at our rented apartment. The iconic Cezanne motif became an obvious stumbling block. I wanted to use it but it took several years of thumbing through the sketchbook to realise a possible composition. I tend to stack completed paintings facing towards the wall, not wanting one to dominate or influence what comes next. Occasionally I lay them out, usually on the floor. The colour palette for much of the work here is reminiscent of Morandi’s landscapes. By chance I came across an exhibition of his landscape studies in Florence. Something may have seeped in to the subconscious. Who knows? Although I have, from time to time, painted the French or Italian landscape it was Jonathan’s suggestion to take the subject as a theme for an exhibition. This is a continuation from the collection shown during lockdown. Many of the titles contain two or three words from a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. They were added once the work was completed, before the journey south from the Black Isle.

Tom Mabon, December 2023