I hope the work speaks for itself. I sometimes paint directly from things but mostly, perhaps, I work from drawings and studies. Often I am trying to combine recollection and imagination with observation, in a single picture.

I am fascinated by the way we see, for instance, a place – the ways in which our perceptions are overlaid or conditioned by memory, imagination, history and emotion.

Whilst living in Rome I fell in love with the glow of simple, unmixed watercolour, leaving out as much of the water as possible, and laid down in rich washes. The medium was useful for recording changing light and architecture in direct, simple ways.

Later, I found it useful for making images of clubs and street scenes in London, done from memory; later still, interiors and cityscapes were the subject matter. My use of watercolour became less direct, more complicated and subject to revision.

I have served as Vice President of the Royal Watercolour Society and continue to serve as its Honorary Curator

Paul Newland NEAC RWS

Full CV (PDF): HERE