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My Statement of Aims
My Personal History

Leslie Hidden was a fine landscape painter



Once of the many LP record covers designed by Leslie Hidden



One of Leslie Hidden's brochure designs

I was lucky enough to have creativity running in my father’s side of the family. My dad, Stanley Hidden, always wanted to paint and draw, but worked at Kodak as a design engineer. In his later years, as ill-health took its toll, he took up marquetry and created some very accomplished pieces, especially of buildings, displaying a great understanding of perspective and angles. His knowledge and expertise has greatly influenced me, as did his brother Leslie, an accomplished graphic designer who painted and sketched throughout his life.

I am influenced by the countryside around me; the colour combinations I observe in life and nature; music, sound, dance and movement; and the shapes, processes and forms of architecture and sculpture. I take inspiration from a wide range of writers and fellow artists, past and present.

I am particularly inspired and interested in how the following artists have worked:

• exploring the connection between music and painting, and how Klee and Kandinsky in particular used that connection in different ways and in a quite methodical manner
  
  
• 13th Century Italian paintings of Duccio which have a purity of colour, shape and organisation within them; there is a simplicity about them and they are beautifully executed and uncluttered
  
  
• the Impressionists – with their use of colour, spontaneity and light
  
  
• Ivon Hitchens and Howard Hodgkins where colour and use of brushstrokes determine the form
  
  
• Cézanne for whom colour is the real building medium in symphonic painting – he said ‘when colour is richest, form is fullest’
  
  
• Seurat, whose scientific study of colour and theory of vibrations of opposite colours used dots and dashes
  
  
• Bridget Riley, who’s use of colour gives the illusion that the painting is moving
  
  
• Bert Irvin used colour to build layers and the colour harmonies of David Hockney, Patrick Heron and Barbara Rae
  
  
• John Hoyland whose writing I find particularly pertinent.
  

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Stanley Hidden designed and made marquetry pictures in his latter years


The simplicity & quality of light used by 13th Century Italian Duccio in, e.g. "The Annunciation", inspire me.


Kandinsky's "Improvisation" represents
a stepping stone into
the world of colour & abstraction.