Aside from vague overtones of sea-side bungalows, the title refers to a connecting thread that links the three locations –West Bay and Portland in Dorset, and the island of Jersey – that feature in this exhibition. West Bay has long been a kind of obsession for me, admittedly not always an easy one to justify to people who happen to know the place, or even, perhaps, to myself. The point is, whatever its merits or otherwise as a visitor destination, those aspects which are of use in the making of a painting are not necessarily those which are self-evidently attractive. This latter quality is if anything quite at odds with a deeper beauty – I am frequently told by people who appreciate my work how unappealing, ugly even, they find the actual location. It makes for a nice paradox. I don’t feel that this is because what I am doing in my work offers a less than truthful, or a sanitised view, but rather that art can somehow reveal a spirit that might otherwise be more or less obscured. It is interesting, not to say gratifying, how often those same people come to see the place in a new way as a result.

Portland embodies a similar contradiction, albeit on a different scale and with a different combination of qualities. Its paradoxes are more visibly on the surface – a more overt story of industrialisation and working of the land, along with an abundance of plant-life. Taken together these have a kind of outlandish-ness that stand in counterpoint to the exhilaration of the surrounding sea and its attendant light. In all my work I try to find the essential character of each image by a process of selection and elimination; it is amazing how the success of a painting can ultimately hinge on some small element of composition.

Jersey as a subject came about by other means: I was invited along with two painter friends, Luke Elwes and Bridget Macdonald, to visit the island and produce work for a show there in 2009. While in many ways dissimilar to the other places, the sea, in the guise of the English Channel, offered an actual and a psychological link, helping me to find a way to connect with qualities of place that could be encompassed by my style of work.

Alex Lowery, May 2011