Keith Purser was born in Kent and attended the Sidcup School of Arts in the 1960s.
As an artist he balances two very different styles used in his landscape paintings, one figurative and the other abstract. As an abstract painter, Purser breaks down the sea and shore into amities of colour, form and texture. This artwork is about shifting weather and changing moods of the coast.
As a figurative painter Purser's work is almost a tribute to English art. His paintings of the down-at-heel resorts and gently rusting harbour towns of the South Coast capture the charm of these places.
These two different parts of Purser's work are always meeting, softly and by chance. The vernacular often steals into the most abstract of works by way of found objects picked off the beach, whilst a Modernist formal sensibility orders the seafront houses into a harmonious arrangement of blocks of colour.
1944 Born in Bromley, Kent.
1960 - 62 Purser attended the Sidcup School of Art.
1963 - 77 He travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East.
1978 He settled in Sussex for five years and became a member of the Rye Society of Artists.
1983 Moved to Trebarwith Strand in North Cornwall where his output became more directly influenced by the landscape.
1987 With his relocation to Lincolnshire, his subject matter remained the coastline and sea, but his compositions became more simplified, echoing the wide horizons and emptiness of the fens.
1989 First one-man exhibition at Jonathan Clark & Co.
1994 Returned to East Sussex, renewed his interest in the coastline and the making of relief constructions, utilising objects found along the tide line.
1995 Purser has remained in East Sussex / Kent where his painting has continued exploring the relationship between the land and sea.
Keith Purser had nine highly successful one-man exhibitions with Jonathan Clark and is widely represented in collections both at home and abroad.
