Andrew Gifford: New Landscapes

South Downs

South Downs In the spring Gifford started to paint outside at the Waterhall Wilding restoration project, the site of a former golf-course on the South Downs. The small panel studies he made at Waterhall were later developed into three large-scale canvases and describe the delicate play of sunlight on nettles, moss and bark deep within the canopy of a hawthorn copse. The bright colours of the Waterhall paintings are in marked contrast to his concluding series, begun in December, three remarkable, brooding paintings of the winter sunrise cutting through the frost-laden tangle of bramble hedges and scrubland at Barcombe Mills in Sussex.