Peter Matthews

Paintings from the Pacific Ocean, Taiwan

2016

These six large scale paintings were painted over an intense five to six month experience of travelling up and down the Pacific Coast in Taiwan, through storms, earthquakes and tragedy, through hardship, illumination and discovery. All the paintings began their life, their journey, on the bottom of the ocean through a succession of free diving adventures to paint a painting where it had never been painted or taken before. Over the months of travelling with the paintings, a painting had emerged on the surface which speaks to the epic pursuit of searching for, sensing, following and chasing those beautiful notions and experiences which embody the sublime and a personal, nomadic and primal relationship with the landscape. For as much that has been revealed and suspended, caught and layered onto the canvas, out there in the open ocean and along the wild stretches of coast remains in flight the elusive, the intangible and the ephemeral.

Photographs of paintings by Damian Griffiths.

installation view of selected paintings from In Search of the Sublime, Beers London, 2016 available to view here.