Outstanding trio

George Rowlett’s new paintings have wonderfully tousled, wind-rucked surfaces, the paint stirred and whipped up in moving emulation of the effects of the elements on water and landscape — his principal subjects. He paints the Thames and the seashore of east Kent; he also records the passage of the seasons on the landscape around Deal where he has a studio. In his latest solo exhibition, the groundfloor gallery of Art Space is dominated by a large and splendid painting called ‘Ramsgate from the Tidal Flats, Pegwell Bay, January’. The pigment is heaped on with spatulas and fingers (Rowlett has given up using brushes) in great joyous horizontal swathes of pink, grey, mauve-blue and lilac above a rusty-russet ground, liberally overlaid with dribbles and trails and flicks of paint, which bear witness to the excitement of its application. Every inch of the painted surface is activated, alive with light and rapturous in celebration of natural beauty.

Downstairs, painting after painting holds the wall with superb authority. Look at the broad luscious strokes which make up ‘Rape to Ripple Church, Weather Changing’: the flowering rapeseed is literally a knockout. The predominantly green and blue ‘Across East Wear Bay to the Warren, Folkestone’ is succinctly fired up by a passage of red and yellow at bottom right. A view of Margate is more contemplative, another towards Ramsgate is all surging pink cloud. A large painting of snow is full of daring colour. Rowlett is inventive and assured, breaking new ground in subject matter (a couple of paintings of a dead thrush have been added to his poignant still-life repertoire of animal skulls) as well as in paint-handling.

The titles are descriptive and lengthy. For instance: ‘Winter, Low Tide at Greenwich, Pontoon, Dolphin and Cormorants from Primrose Wharf’. You could get more precise than that, but it wouldn’t fit in the catalogue.