Personal vision

At the beginning of Richard Ingrams’s book on John Piper (1903–92), he quotes the artist as saying: ‘The basic and unexplainable thing about my paintings is a feeling for places.

At the beginning of Richard Ingrams’s book on John Piper (1903–92), he quotes the artist as saying: ‘The basic and unexplainable thing about my paintings is a feeling for places. Not for “travel”, but just for going somewhere — anywhere, really — and trying to see what hasn’t been seen before.’ It’s a good description of what makes Piper’s best work special and memorable, that feeling not just for identifying the spirit of a place, but for depicting it as never before.

In this way, Piper at his most focused and intense (essentially at his most personal) transcends the topographical and moves into that higher realm of inquiry and statement we call art. A new exhibition, currently spread over three venues, restricts itself intelligently to the work Piper made of two counties — Kent and Sussex.