About Richard Heys

I am an abstract artist & work from a studio in the Sussex countryside in England, thirty miles south of London. Often I hear the buzzards calling. I see them riding the thermals and I look across the valley to the Ashdown Forest, appreciating the folding landscape around me. In my current working practice I create many overlapping layers of colour and textures of paint, through the use of squeegees, brushes and other print making tools. The colour breaks in certain ways which may give the impression of the surface of water, the texture of bark or a sense of a map, an unfolding landscape through which one traverses. Nature and landscape have always been important touchstones in my work – there is a specific geography to every painting.

My paintings are colour-driven and I strive to create paintings with presence.

I think that if I'm worth my salt as a painter I can create a little miracle, a moment of innocence and ecstasy on a daily basis. And occasionally I manage to do this! I silence my thinking mind and become a channel. In flow, things come into presence in my work. I do not illustrate or realise ideas, the work is its own revealing and holds a mystery for me. As Seamus Heaney writes, we go to art to be ‘forwarded within ourselves’. This casting myself forward enables me to bring a spaciousness and a sense of the numinous into my work.