LOOKING OUT TO THE SEA TO SEE

21 JANUARY - 19 FEBRUARY 2023 / EVERARD READ / FRANSCHHOEK

Looking Out To The Sea To See is inspired by the sea (and sky, the colour of dusk and dawn, the passage of the moon...). Much of it was painted from memory while I was away from the sea in the vineyards of Franschhoek. The show is about the sea, the memory of the sea, and it is a meditation on the act of looking out to sea, on how we see reality. All of the works show views through windows and frames – abstracted, graphic, brightly coloured shapes that represent actual things. They are also metaphors for the intangible ideas and beliefs that shape our perception. In a similar way, the sea in the paintings is itself, a body of water, and it is also abstract, poetic and symbolic. For me, looking out to sea always involves contemplation of the horizon, that faraway, always-there, ever-changing non-place where sea and sky appear to meet. Much like the act of painting, it is visible and also profoundly ephemeral, elusive, mysterious.