I stayed in East Sussex last week, with some very dear old friends. We went to Towner Eastbourne and saw the permanent collection of work by the early 20th century artist Eric Ravilious. I’d always found his landscape paintings a little bit insipid, if I’m honest, but we went walking along the South Downs after seeing the exhibition and I realised that his palette is very accurate: the colours of this part of the East Sussex landscape are very muted and delicate. I did a quick pencil sketch en plein air and today I used gouache to start blocking in some colour. Once it’s dry, I’ll work over it with tiny patterns of slightly different shades and tints of the base colours. It was only when I got up close to the framed work in the Gallery that I realised the extent of his patterning.
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