Joseph Dilnot

Joseph Dilnot paints in oil on paper, panel and linen, mostly at a small scale and with the finest brushes, so that every part of an image holds up to close looking. His landscapes of hidden glades, living mountains and drifting clouds are crossed by solitary figures: exiles, hermits, travellers and ghosts, sometimes half-hidden at the edge of the scene or absorbed into the land itself. Everyday objects such as ladders, candles, shoes, hats and doorways carry the weight of talismans. Dilnot builds a personal mythology from memory, folklore, literature and the history and landscape of the South Downs, adding hybrid creatures. He works by suggestion, leaving gaps and erasures like those in a weathered manuscript, so that much of what the paintings hold stays just out of view.