Russell Frampton

This series of small ship paintings refer to a complex set of references, both personal and within the tradition of ‘Maritime art’. My personal experiences of sailing as a child and being steeped in the lore of the nautical, being brought up at Warsash, on the River Hamble in Hampshire, have often surfaced periodically throughout my career as a painter. The fascination with the form of the ship, its rig, its profile, its refined utilitarianism, and its location, within or on the elemental intersection of sea, land and sky, provides the impetus for my painting.

My process involves the construction of ‘distressed’ panels often resourced from beach combing around the coasts of Devon and Cornwall. Surfaces are built up through the overlaying of paint and the use of collaged/decoupage techniques which aim to build into the work a temporal quality, 'The Passage’ 2023, for example explores the multiple, overlaid imagery of a regular sea passage, a route or a repeated navigation. One of my trademark techniques is the use of gold metallic leaf, a process I have been experimenting with for a number of years, which adds a lustre and painterly depth to some of the pieces and offers a partially reflective surface, which is itself distressed and ‘processed’ more akin to ‘old gold' and the remnants of illuminated medieval manuscripts.

Maybe these paintings are forms of sea logs, repeated entries into a journal/painting that somehow conjures or evokes some aspect of the ships themselves and their passage through time.