Landscape painter
| ROWAN HUNTLEY | Home | |
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Landscape painter |
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Attending Dyfed College of Art situated in the heart of the Welsh countryside brought about an unexpected change to my intention of following a career in illustration. I gained a BTec HND in Design Crafts specialising in Wildlife Illustration, but several factors conspired to change my desired direction within the Visual Arts to that of Landscape Painter. Having grown up in the Lowlands of Scotland watching my artist father paint, I was intrigued by the process of creating pictures from observation of the landscape. It was this inherent need to try to create my own interpretation of the natural environment, together with the beauty of the Welsh scenery in which I found myself, which led to my decision to become eventually a full time painter of landscapes. Subsequent employment as Graphic Designer at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery (UK) only intensified my desire to further my career in painting rather than design.
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I have always harboured a deep love for wild, rugged scenery and a fascination for the extreme effects of light and shade which often play on it with great result. On returning to live in Wales in 1992 I delighted in being able to explore the beautiful and varied countryside around me. Together with brief exploration of central Scotland and Connemara in the west of Ireland I have now had the pleasure of being introduced to, and of painting, some of Britain and Ireland's wildest, most beautiful landscapes. |
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| Painting the Glamorgan Coast, Wales |
A significant point in my painting career was my discovery in 1994 of the towering mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales, with their alluring mystery and bleak splendour. As I began to draw and paint there I developed an intense desire to discover more about how such a jagged and mountainous landscape had been created - to look beneath the surface of the scenery I could see and really begin to understand the natural processes such as glaciation, which had been instrumental in its shaping many tens of thousands of years ago. It is for this reason that I spent over seven years exploring the Jostedalsbreen glacier and the mountains and glaciers of the Jotunheimen National Park in Norway.
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| Bøyabreen | Styggedalsbreen | Nigardsbreen |
My attentions return frequently to the stunning Welsh Glamorgan coastline on my doorstep, an area full of striking cliffs, rocks and wave-cut platforms. However my love for, and deep interest in glaciated mountainscapes has taken me, and will I'm sure continue to take me, much further afield. A February visit to southern Finland introduced me to yet another beautiful winter landscape, of snowy woodland, frozen lakes and ice covered sea. I have ventured above the Arctic Circle to the incredible Lofoten Islands and have returned many times to paint the beauty and solitude of Norway's Jotunheim mountains. The Chamonix Valley and Zermatt have proved a paradise for ice and rock studies and are the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I hope to explore of the Alps. Continuing with this work is of huge importance and enjoyment to me, but although I now see myself largely as a mountain painter, I know I will occasionally be distracted - by both the ordinary and the unusual - closer to home.
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| Sognefjell, Norway |