Paul Boyle

In the Hullscapes series I am creating a series of poetic and lyrical images by discovering, observing and framing markings on boat hulls. These images, all taken from a single boatyard over many years, are details of boat hulls in dry dock awaiting or undergoing overhaul and refitting, the workers creating marks with grinders and scrapers that I interpret as images of the sea.

Study of very small areas of the hulls’ paintwork can be readily perceived as sea, coastal scenes, water patterns, conveying mood and expressing a sense of the sea normally associated with painting – a flake of paint becoming the turn of a wave or a rock on the sand. 

Visually the works display the kind of distillation and synthesis of subject matter more usually associated with painting or printmaking. That they are lens based products of photography, the ‘objective’ visual medium, is a continuing fascination for me.