I’ve been working in and on the hills around Todmorden and throughout Calderdale for the past year – since we moved here from Manchester last February, just ahead of the first lockdown. The series of works produced over this period I’ve titled Fault Lines. This is partly a reference to the geological and social history of Calderdale which interests me intensely and also to my way of working which comes from my history as a drawer and etcher rather than as a painter, working in watercolour, graphite, pastel and gesso, almost always outside, in the landscape itself.

These works take an approach to recording the environment which I increasingly see to be more of a kind of data-collection activity than an attempt to render a locality, or even to produce abstract responses to the landscape. They mark the journeying as much as the locations I settle into. Working in series and often re-visiting the same location repeatedly, I work very directly and intuitively in a space that is somewhere between abstraction and figuration, letting each work evolve to find its own identity.

During the Open Studio weekend I’ll also be showing a collection of works completed in Manchester. Again, all completed on location – usually within brownfield sites, or from the banks of the Irwell or Bridgewater Canal and focusing on the massively changing city centre landscape.

Other work and work for sale can be seen at https://martingrimes.net. And works are also available from Hope Gallery in Hebden Bridge.