Paul Zawadzki

Based in Bungay, part of the beautiful Waveney Valley, I get inspiration from a love of the local rural scenery at Outney Common and Bath Hills as well as the uncompromising Suffolk coastline at places like Dunwich and Covehithe. Inspiration comes from many natural sources, particularly marshes, forests, and shorelines.

I mainly paint in oils on canvas or board, sometimes incorporating natural materials such as sand, earth, and detritus in my work in order to capture the texture and spirit of the landscape. There is a love of spontaneity too, I enthusiastically embrace the ‘happy accident’ and make full use of washing out, dripping, blotting, and expressive actions while retaining an element of traditional landscape painting.

As an artist and musician I like to include an element of synesthesia in my work (I percieve colours in sound and music) which helps me in his other role as an electronic music composer (under the name of ‘Sineflesh’) - the two sides of my practice support and influence each other.

Recently I have been using deliberately rusted steel and distressed unprimed canvas, together with varnish, metal dust, sand, cement and oil paint, to convey my relationship with the eroding cliffs and trees at Benacre and Covehithe on the north Suffolk coast.

Part of my research, begun while studying for an MA Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts, involves investigating ideas of permanence versus impermanence and time-based immateriality, using materials that themselves corrode, viewed from an auto-ethnographic perspective around my 50-year relationship with, and love of, this area of the East Anglian coast. Related work includes audio and video pieces derived from location field recordings.