Foreword to the Paintings

It is said that all artists belong to their time. In one sense for this artist this statement is true. His choice of subject matter the domestic poultry, game birds, landscapes, still life and flowers are all in their different ways popular contemporary subjects. We have seen in recent years domestic fowl come very much into vogue.

The painter takes each of these themes beyond the mundane to a different place, to a romantic and timeless place. The farmyard cock is no longer a scraggy dunghill fowl, he is now an exotic and elegant nobleman, the landscapes take us beyond representation; we can stand on the spot where the artist set up his easel, and be drawn into a painting which is an ideal of that reality. The still lives and flower paintings seem to belong to the Golden Age of Flemish Art and yet the objects in the still lives are contemporary and the flowers can be seen today in many a plantsman's garden.

We are invited by the artist to share in his love of subject matter, but to share also in a vision of the romantic and the ideal.

It always amazes me how much the artist achieves. These paintings are both painstaking and time consuming in their execution. So much thought is given, from preparation of canvas, which the artist always does himself, right through to the fine detail of the finished work.

The accomplishment is a given. It is the timeless idealism of the paintings before us that, to me, set them apart.

Gerald Thorburn