Leslie Hidden was a fine landscape painter



Once of the many LP record covers designed by Leslie Hidden



One of Leslie Hidden's brochure designs

I was lucky enough to have creativity running in my father’s side of the family. My dad, Stanley Hidden, always wanted to paint and draw, but worked at Kodak as a design engineer. In his later years, as ill-health took its toll, he took up marquetry and created some very accomplished pieces, especially of buildings, displaying a great understanding of perspective and angles. His knowledge and expertise has greatly influenced me, as did his brother Leslie, an accomplished graphic designer who painted and sketched throughout all his life.

I am influenced by the countryside around me; the colour combinations I observe in life and nature; music, sound, dance and movement; and the shapes, processes and forms of architecture and sculpture. I take inspiration from a wide range of writers and fellow artists, past and present.

I am particularly inspired and interested in how the following artists have worked:

• exploring the connection between music and painting, and how Klee and Kandinsky in particular used that connection in different ways and in a quite methodical manner
  
  
• 13th Century Italian paintings of Duccio which have a purity of colour, shape and organisation within them; there is a simplicity about them and they are beautifully executed and uncluttered
  
  
• the Impressionists – with their use of colour, spontaneity and light
  
  
• Ivon Hitchens and Howard Hodgkins where colour and use of brushstrokes determine the form
  
  
• Cézanne for whom colour is the real building medium in symphonic painting – he said ‘when colour is richest, form is fullest’
  
  
• Seurat, whose scientific study of colour and theory of vibrations of opposite colours used dots and dashes
  
  
• Bridget Riley, who’s use of colour gives the illusion that the painting is moving
  
  
• Bert Irvin used colour to build layers and the colour harmonies of David Hockney, Patrick Heron and Barbara Rae
  
  
• John Hoyland whose writing I find particularly pertinent.