Justin Sidney | Transparent Elements within Time: Andipa, London

Justin Sidney's absorbing body of work captures the most evasive of images, colours and textures: the transformative effects of the transparent elements, water and air, over time.
Sidney's work focus on the overlooked, neglected and abandoned parts of the built environment and how the passage of time and the effect of water transforms these surfaces. The works have attracted the attention of practitioners of art and colour therapy and those who study the remedial qualities of observing and losing oneself in the visual.
The focus of Sidney's attention is texture and time-worn matter: beach glass, cracked and weathered wood, abandoned buildings, rusted metal and corroded surfaces. His work is often perceived as abstract, however, each painting draws from reality and is influenced by various sites and locations, textures and colours.
The artist scours the city for forgotten corners to which he returns to again and again, noting the colour transitions and contemplating the effects of the transparent elements of water and time. He commits to memory the complex details of the chosen surface. In the studio, he enlarges his impressions of these micro-landscapes and draws us into these worlds, inviting us to contemplate their depths. The paintings are created on the studio floor using a sophisticated mix of acrylics, allowing him to gradually build up the surface of the painting in many layers before judiciously allowing pools of water to form and to be removed using a rag, a brush or improvised implement.
Looking at the canvases, one is drawn into deep landscapes from which one imagines a boat emerging, or thick willowy foliage draping into the watery environment. These are highly contemplative, absorbing paintings, which display a profound understanding of colour, materials and textures.