About Ian
Born in Sunderland in 1956, Ian Watson took a first Degree from Liverpool in 1978, and an MA from Leeds in 1996. He has divided his time between teaching Art and Painting and has run the Art Departments at The Mount School York, and The English International College Marbella. He has painted in Spain, Greece and Australia, exhibiting in all three. Ian works in oil, pastel and mixed media producing work in a variety of styles around the themes of the Nude and Landscape. After 37 years teaching he has now retired to the Devon coast and is devoting all his time to painting.
“All of my works begin as small sketches from life which are then developed in layers of oil on canvas. I want to make paintings that do not have the flat sheen of mass-media photos of places or bodies, but in which the surfaces show a flawed, imperfect reality. I do not hold to any particular style of painting, letting each work develop what seems to be the correct method which could be thin paint layers, heavy impasto or a combination of both. These are images created by layers of memory and direct observation, fluid, and changing. Each painting combines several viewpoints; fleeting acts of perception merging into something that, whatever else it is, is not a ‘view’. I was always concerned that the painted surface should be gritty and curiously textured like the real. Recently I have become intrigued by the way my drawing methods create networks of sight lines. These are a result of combining different viewpoints encountered during my movement through the landscape, or round a body, as well as the movement of the landscape or the body itself. These works are a result of these deliberations.”