Suffolk River by Ronald Rutherford
This painting is undated but it is thought that it was made during the 1950s. During this period, many artists started to examine scenes of daily life, usually painted in what is termed a restricted palette in other words using relatively few colours. The colours here: white, brown, grey, yellow and blue, evoke the coastal environment. The artist has used the grey paint across the images of the boats and the land and taken it into the upper half of the painting where it is part sea, part sky. The work is divided by strong horizontal and vertical lines. This is very much a work about composition and painting, about generating a sense of atmosphere rather than the photographic capture of a moment in time.