Artist Andy Waite's "joy of discovery"

Andy said: “I am grateful to once again be invited to show with them. The importance of a good relationship between artist and gallerist cannot be overstated; above all there needs to be an understanding of what you and your work are about, and when the gallery gets you and is prepared to hang your paintings on their walls, there is a feeling of mutual trust. You have offered your heart and soul and they in return will promote and champion your work, carrying the depth of your feeling to others and forging connections that find their way back to you, which is all you could wish for.

“The exhibition is called Wellspring, the source from which everything flows. For me painting is the focus and source of my expression and something that continues to excite and inspire me. In my 36th year of working as a painter, I can reflect on the journey from my tentative beginnings as a still life watercolourist to my current interpretation of what you could loosely call landscape. The slow but steady shift towards abstraction means that now I am conjuring places that perhaps only exist subliminally and come without the restriction of having to represent anywhere specific. It is this freedom that currently drives me forward to make what feels like the most rewarding work of my life, the deepest and most connected to that elusive thing we might call spirit, the wellspring of all that we are.

“The paintings in this collection as much as anything reflect my intense relationship with colour, and there is still this sense of excitement by what there is to be discovered, in how colours sit together and what those particular combinations convey to our sensibilities. It’s not something one can quite put into words; it’s more intangible, but you know it’s there, like distilling some silent essence that has fallen from a hitherto uncategorised species of flower or tree.

“One of the paintings included in the show is titled Inventing Eden, and on its conclusion, I stood back wondering if the colour palette felt quite right because initially it didn’t appear to. There are intense shades of yellow bleeding into peach and pink hues and next to these sit some deeper, contrasting reds and it was only returning to it a little later that it fell into place in my mind. It had that feeling of virgin, uncharted territory, a little Eden that I’d inadvertently stumbled upon, and I think that is what I am constantly looking for, the unintentional journey that enables the joy of discovery more than a specific, planned route.”

Exhibition dates: May 10-June 8. The gallery is open from 11-4 daily. Closed Wednesday.

Arundel Contemporary, 2 Maltravers Street, Arundel, BN18 9AP, 07809 462992/07508 467701 www.arundelcontemporary.com

“I will be showing alongside the extraordinary ceramics of Katie Moore who has developed a unique framework, that of the theatre, referring to her clay objects as props which she paints and directs on stage. She likes to document her surroundings through sketching, both by hand and digitally, using these visuals as guides for painting her raw clay objects, describing the decorating and firing of the clay surface as an ongoing experiment.”