Chris Langlois

It was one of the most difficult paintings trips, if not the most, to have partaken. Dumping my bags of paints, pallets and boards I sit down in the sand and a strange feeling washes over me. Guilt. How am I going to explain this to my wife that this is work when I’m sitting on a beach on this beautiful island in the Whitsundays, with a great group of friends and an esky full of beer. Yes, this definitely looks like a holiday. Better do something…

For more than 30 years I have painted large landscapes and seascapes in a studio environment, and when I say large I mean five by six feet and larger, but occasionally I do small works outside on location, as I have here in this exhibition. I don’t do large work outside as the canvases would get blown away and if I managed to keep one in place long enough would take too long to complete as the light changes way too quickly, so small is good as I can keep starting new works as things change. Small is good ‘cause I can paint the landscape quickly and spontaneously, luxuriating in the buttery goodness of oil paint. These little paintings are meant to be raw, painterly and gestural; they are almost sketch like.

Most importantly, when bringing the works back to the studio, I tried to resist heavily reworking them, as in the past I found something is lost in the painting of the place you’re trying to capture