Oil and acrylic on plywood. Although my paintings are abstract, I feel that the most successful ones also have a sense of space and of place. Increasingly, my paintings often begin with a landscape image, or a shape or structure taken from a map or an aerial photograph. This is then obscured as I begin to apply more layers to the surface, only emerging again as I begin the process of working back through the layers before the painting is completed.

Matthew Webber

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Matthew Webber’s experimental abstract paintings are created over a period of weeks, months, even years, with the artist systematically applying paint until a dense slab of layered pigment and texture is formed, ready for his process of ‘unpainting’ to begin. Gradually, as this painted surface is removed, the artist slowly uncovers an intricate network of colour and contours buried within. This is painting as archaeology: the story of each piece is minutely revealed - complex and unique - emerging like marble from a hand-painted block. Inspired by the landscape – particularly the liminal spaces where nature and humanity collide – Webber’s paintings attempt to capture the increasingly unpredictable processes and events which shape the natural world. Living and working in East London for the past 25 years, Webber has exhibited widely in the UK. His work is held in numerous private collections.