In 1966 Ray Atkins erected a 6 x 6ft board secured to a temporary structure on the edge of the Thames amidst the rubble and dereliction of London’s docklands and started to paint the first of a series of huge paintings of Millwall Entrance. Leaving such a large painting on site for weeks on end was a massive undertaking that opened up new and exciting possibilities. “Day after day I worked on it and I found that amazing things kept happening, and the more I worked on it the more extraordinary it became.” This was landscape in perpetual movement; landscape as experienced. Leon Kossoff wrote that “Ray Atkins uses the outside world as a studio. The landscape emerges from day to day involvement with an ever changing subject which is finally committed to a specific visual experience. I have admired these paintings for many years.”
Ray Atkins: At the Forest’s Edge (2015)
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