Over the past few years I have visited the Arab Emirates four times, painting in the landscape and absorbing the surroundings for paintings back in my studio. I exhibit in the Majlis gallery in Dubai. This year I travelled to Oman. It has a stunning coastline and mountainous interior which was great to explore.

The desert provides wide open spaces with incidental objects .The colours bring a different range to my work from that developed from the Cornish landscape work, which I hope I have explored in this group of paintings.

I also make a lot of drawings from the local architecture, take colour references from local textiles and make a lot of sketches from everyday life.

Travel is an important influence on my work, the desert landscape, its unforgiving but beautiful landscape, its solitude and space. It compares well with the space you can find in Cornwall, which has become my home and area of continual inspiration.

I work directly from the landscape and in my studio, using varied subject matter, be it seascape, sunflowers, the human figure or working from sketch books.

Over time my paintings have become about the use of materials along side the subject matter, be it paint, plaster ,glue, pigment, collage, or what ever seems to come along and makes sense.

It's a process of experimentation, reaction and balance, in no particular order, until the painting becomes alive to me. Layers on layers, stitched on paper and canvas, ways of moving on the work, incorporating what has come before.

The overall spirit of the painting seems to be wrapped up in the process, and evolves with the work.

The surface has become an important factor, like walls that have a history, a beauty through imperfection.

My process of working is to have approximately six or seven canvases being worked on at any one time. This not only allows for the drying time between layers, but also creates a natural relationship by jumping from one to the other, tearing or pulling bits off one to add to another, using a process that installs energy and life into the work.

www.paulwadsworth.me.uk