Gerry Dudgeon

Born in Darjeeling in 1952, Gerry Dudgeon studied Fine Art at Camberwell School of Art, gaining a first class Honours degree in 1979, and then an MFA postgraduate degree from Reading University under the tutelage of Sir Terry Frost and the constructivist artist Adrian Heath.   After a travelling scholarship to New York, he worked from studios in London before moving to West Dorset in 1987, where he lived and worked until his death in 2023.

Gerry travelled extensively through the desert villages of Rajasthan and the Atlas mountains of Morocco, absorbing atmosphere and culture, and above all, the quality of light, and recording his impressions through sketchbook drawings which he used as detailed reference points for his richly evocative semi abstract paintings back in the studio.

Close to home, Gerry’s Dorset paintings combined distant views of hills, sea and sky with  a closer scrutiny of the etched and weathered surfaces of rocks and fossils.  The most recent of his works saw his colour palette moving towards ethereal blues and creamy pinks, sometimes coinciding with the colours he used for Greek seascapes, and they became more about the sea, light and atmosphere.  Traces of manmade objects can occasionally be seen;  perhaps a fishing net, or the colours of scraped paintwork on the side of a boat, or a fishing buoy.