Andy Rollo is an artist and Lecturer in Fine Art and Visual Culture who has lived in North Dorset for the past 15 years.  He has work in private collections in Europe, Australia and the United States and has had his work exhibited in London, Paris and Barcelona over a thirty-year career.  His creative practice has always been in response to his immediate surroundings and explores the concept of time, memory, cycles, connections and patterns in nature as well as light and colour.  The work also explores the thin line between abstraction and figuration, most obviously observed on the surface of each painting with its juxtaposition of differing mediums, descriptive marks and intuitive gestures.

Over the last four years the artist has immersed himself in the landscape and woodland of Dorset, choosing to paint unassuming, almost incidental subjects.  Andy Rollo focuses in on the complexity of moss clad trees, the quality of light falling on the woodland floor and abstract shapes and forms, building up surfaces that suggest rather than outright describe. He juxtaposes dabs and dashes, palette knife marks, washes and impasto together with a mix of oils, acrylic and spray paint.  For him the striking landscape of our local area has become a place of sanctuary in recent years and symbolises strength and protection, steadfastness and long life. The tree withstands whatever nature throws at it, and we have had to do the same, whilst continually being reminded of our own mortality and the passing of time.

In the paintings exhibited, you see how the transformational quality of light has enabled areas of woodland to take on an almost cathedral like quality, awe inspiring and magnificent with their juxtaposition of grandeur and the spiritual.  They are intentionally uncomposed, in an attempt to give the spectator the feeling of an incidental view, echoing the way you observe nature when surrounded by it.  He is trying to show that there is soul and beauty everywhere you look and to encourage you to stop and look harder.