Mead, Robert; (2025) Painting on the Brink: Finding Colour at the Edge of Time. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

On the coast of East Anglia… A place slowly changing with the ebb of the tide. Gradual disintegration of land and scattering of materials. With the fall of earth comes the destruction of human settlements and the mixing of modern human-made materials with natural. The beach road in Happisburgh is slowly receding and house by house the sea is claiming this area. The stripping back of the coast reveals the strata of deep time, revelations of fossils, prehistoric bedrock and new brickwork of modern constructions. A black dog stands amongst the ruins, his coat matted with moss and brick dust. The edges of time are stained with the colours of these materials, where histories and stories can be picked up and held between your fingers. In the studio these materials become pigments. They then become part of paintings which reflect this stratification of place and time - exploring different scales within the picture and building layers of material and image, traces, and residues. The colours from this place become markers of my own memory and relationship to a landscape and are tethered to stories that have come before. The black dog follows me to London. Exploring Norfolk, and my own family history and memories there, has been a gateway to developing a practice that works through local fieldwork to create a portal for global reflections on loss, change and imagination. Questioning how natural and human made / animal and more-than-human subjects are entwined and entangled by the rupturing and collapsing edges between them. Different zones of fieldwork reveal different changes and alternating relationships to time. As the fresh water marshlands of Cley are eroded and flooded, turning to salt, the nearby Blakeney Point grows in size as the sea pushes more sand outwards onto its outcrop. Human defences rely on barriers such as a sea wall which offer an oblique response, a structure against the sea, ultimately returning to the strict divide between humanity and our planet - or culture and nature - an ambition of wrestling control of the environment. My practice seeks to highlight the collapse and reformation of both earth and histories and, in so doing, shift the focus towards a deeper reading of time, both before and ahead of us. Double horizons, multiple futures, and buried histories are split through by shards of rock and time. To build a wall against the sea To hold the tide Rewriting King Cnut’s fable By placing time in stasis Painting is an act of suspension, of pigments in binder, of canvas taught on a stretcher. Systems of holding and binding ideas, images, and memories. These colours link to sites of rupture, to the fissures between buried histories and futures that have been lost to the sea. They are colours that are found at the edge of time. These multiple entanglements are buried in my paintings, fragments of image and symbol to engage with and read through making different visual connections. This layering and interweaving of meaning through imagery and material is an ongoing process of reflecting on the changing conditions of our planet and imagining alternate ways of thinking about our relationship to both our past and our future. In doing so I open up this process of reflection to those who receive my work.

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