Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983)
Grey Fields (1965)
Oil on board, 60 x 60cm (23½ x 23½'')
Signed with monogram; Also signed, inscribed and dated 1965 verso

While each decade of...

Colin Middleton MBE RHA RUA (1910-1983)
Grey Fields (1965)
Oil on board, 60 x 60cm (23½ x 23½'')
Signed with monogram; Also signed, inscribed and dated 1965 verso

While each decade of Colin Middletons work demonstrates fresh ambitions and innovations, there remains a remarkable consistency between different periods. Grey Fields, 1965, shares the rigorous and austere investigation of the Irish landscape that dominates his paintings in the 1960s, but the repeated square patterning of the present work also recalls the 1942 painting Thinking of Antwerp (National Museums Northern Ireland), flattening and uniting the picture surface, with a similar use of diagonals or triangles to create passages of space as the eye moves from foreground to background. The geometric emphasis of many of these later landscapes does not detract from their subtle evocation of the effects of light and changing weather on a very specific place.

Dickon Hall
September 2016

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