DISSOLVE

“Over 50 years of painting I’ve found the best way to capture the essence of a subject is to take out the detail…to dissolve it. By ‘dissolving’ we strip away the detail and allow the imagination in. I don’t so much paint the subject itself but the ‘effect’ or essence of it.

“That’s why I like rain. Rain naturally dissolves a scene. It softens the hard edge of cities. It creates a veil. It adds mystery. When I get to a city to start painting, I hope it rains. Rain is a way of washing away the complex detail of a city’s face revealing something essential about place.”

“Whoever said “less is more” hit the nail on the head.”

“We don’t see with our eyes. We see with our brain. Our eyes simply send a message to our brain which sorts out the image, the shape and colour and interprets it with imagination and memory. If you fill in all the detail it simply leaves less to the imagination.”

“When I teach I encourage students to see past the detail. Taking detail out allows the viewer’s imagination and memory into the painting. The same happens when you read a book. Words trigger responses in the brain and the reader’s imagination fills in those details creating the scenes and the characters in the process. I try to achieve the same result through the medium of paint.”

David Hinchliffe