Roger Curtis

Roger studied painting at Birmingham College of art and Design (1961 – 1965).

His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, his home in the fishing port of Newlyn providing the ideal base for his paintings of the far south west of Cornwall. These paintings almost always begun, and usually completed, ‘en plein air’.

“This is a very special place for any painter, the light, which everyone talks about, seems to reverberate in the moist air blowing in from the Atlantic. It wraps itself around forms and penetrates shadows, often enriching them with unexpected colour. But it also has a harsh quality, quite unlike the light usually experienced in the UK. Of course, it changes constantly, as do the tides, the weather, the coming and going of boats, animals and people, nothing in this landscape is static for more than a few minutes. I enjoy the challenge of trying to record transitory events: shadow, reflections, birds, water. In this quite small area, further interest comes from the tremendous variety of different locations: the beaches, windswept moorlands with Cornish hedges, wild rocky cliffs and the busy harbours. All are favourite painting subjects.”