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 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.

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