For several decades Jeremy Gardiner has been exploring the coast of Cornwall and Dorset on long walks, boat rides and flights, forever seeking out new points of view for his landscape painting. His adventurous spirit has led him to discover the geology of other parts of the world, from the volcanic forms of Fernando de Noronha, an archipelago 300 miles off the north east coast of Brazil, to Milos, one of the Cycladian Greek islands. But it is Cornwall and Dorset that stir his imagination the most and he is making new discoveries and finding fresh sources of inspiration as he ventures further into unknown territory.

What the surface of the world looks like depends on where you are in a particular time in history, every landscape is merely a phase. How does one distil into a painting the experience of standing on a cliff top or looking out to sea? According to Marcel Proust, who was a great admirer of John Ruskin, “Reality lies not in the appearance of the subject but in the extent to which it leaves an impression on the artist”. In other words, realism has to be put aside in the artist’s search for a pictorial reality.

By creating distinct layers of colour, Gardiner’s working method involves scouring, building accretions of paint, collaging and sanding down, in an attempt to emulate on the surface of his paintings the effects of geological time on the landscape. He combines different features from different locations of the coastline in the same paintings, achieving images that take the viewer on a new exploration of familiar territory, from multiple perspectives.

Henry Beesley, September 2010