From his third floor studio Alan Rankle gets a view all across St Leonards, looking over the rooftops to
the beach and newly restored pier beyond.

The rays bounce around his paint-spattered white walls recalling a classic Italian Renaissance studio –
albeit one with shelves of CDs ranging from Bob Dylan to the Incredible String Band and hand-written
lyrics and phrases scrawled in permanent marker. “The light reflected from the sea is extraordinary,” says Alan, 64, who works with assistant and fellow fine artist Rebecca Youssefi in the studio.

Alan’s latest projects include the exhibition Pastoral Collateral, which is currently at the Art Bermondsey
Project Space in London’s Bermondsey Street until Saturday, 30 April. Both he and Rebecca have contributed artworks to the Chestnut Tree Hospice Big Heart Auction which takes place at Brighton Dome in July. Alan’s contribution is a limited edition inkjet print of a pastoral hillside landscape corrupted by bright blue and red brush strokes. This sublime scenery, drawing inspiration from the likes of JMW Turner and John Constable and based on landscapes in West Yorkshire, Italy, New York and Scandinavia, is a recurring theme in Alan’s work. But he alters and changes the pastoral scene with the addition of bright colour and most recently layers of texture built upon the canvas by Rebecca. Alan describes Rebecca’s preparation of his canvases on their occasional collaborative works as almost being artworks in themselves.
The shapes and textures recall wood grain or leaf prints, giving set space for Alan to work in, and
emphasising certain aspects of the scene.

“I’m not so much trying to make a definitive version,” says Alan of his return to familiar landscapes.
“A lot of artists will do this – return to painting the same portrait, always feeling they can do another
version. You can put them in different lights as Monet did with Rouen Cathedral.
“I can draw the trees from memory and re-imagine them in another form. I relate it to the way musicians
work on classic songs – when Bob Dylan plays an old song he is improvising on the memory of the song.
I’m improvising on the memory of the painting. It would be interesting to get some of the paintings
together from over the years to see the same oak tree.”
His disruptions of the pastoral scenes come from a passionate interest in the environment, which began
when he was part of the Friends of the Earth-supported Arts for the Earth in the early 1980s.
“Arts for the Earth wasn’t just about raising money, it was about raising issues,” he says, adding in 1986
he received a lot of media attention for a 30m Chinese-inspired landscape scroll produced on Beachy
Head with collaborator Jan Stephens.
“At that time people noticed forests were being destroyed in the north of Europe because Britain and
Germany were putting out this sulphurous smoke from their factories. It’s illegal now – and Arts for the
Earth was instrumental in that.
“I was also involved with the Marine Stewardship Council, trying to persuade governments around the
world to create a sustainable ocean. They have had a lot of success.
“But now sadly big money is not responding to the environment. Tom Burke [former executive director of
Friends of the Earth] has been a big supporter of my work. He says today it’s like they never made any
progress. He got Putin to sign up to the Kyoto Agreement on greenhouse emissions, and then a few
years later both the Russians and the US backed out.”
The historical element to his painting reflects another time when big money was making untold damage
to the environment.
“The romantic landscapes were financed in Britain by people who had made fortunes out of the Industrial
Revolution or the slave trade,” he says.
“These wonderful art works were looking back at a golden age, and were sponsored by people who had
ruined the life of the peasant in England forever.”
Alan initially brought his young family to St Leonards in 1983, preferring to bring them up by the sea
rather than in the centre of Camden.
Over the years he has seen the town change and develop.
“Lots of artists and musicians have moved here,” he says. “More recently there have been people
working in television and things like that. There is a dialogue about art being set up which is very
beneficial.”

When Sussex Life arrives in his studio he is preparing to move temporarily over to another studio he
keeps in a converted barn in the grounds of an old country house 60 km from Marseilles in France.
“I also work in Copenhagen,” he says. “It’s nice to go from one place to another, doing the same work but
in a different environment. Most artists I know are always travelling.”
Indeed his latest projects with Rebecca have had a psychogeographical edge, as he explores cities for
different commissions.
The pair recently put together a series of seven paintings, entitled Alluvione di Nero, for the JW Marriott
Sacca Sessola Resort and Spa in Venice.

The starting point for the images was a series of 100 photomontages taken by Rebecca while walking
around the city.
“She sees different things,” says Alan. “We are creating works that have many layers of art and
photography – the photomontages underpin them. It’s another way of looking at the city.
“By mixing up two or three layers of photographs it creates a new narrative, and an image that no-one
has ever seen before. We can juxtapose different strange elements – such as church interiors and
Venetian masks.”
Another element which has come into Alan’s work recently is graffiti tags – inspired by an experience
with taggers in Copenhagen.
“I got annoyed with kids graffiti-ing my front door,” he says. “We were right between a skate park and a
housing estate and every day a little mob of kids would tag their names.
“Originally I was going to paint a butterfly on one of their tags – suggesting they learn how to do
something like that. But instead I took photographs of their graffiti and printed it onto my canvas.
“When we had an exhibition in Copenhagen all these street kids came in to the private view pointing at
the tags saying: ‘that’s mine!’.”
Details of The Big Heart Auction can be found online at www.bigheartauction.org.uk/
Alan and Rebecca’s work will be on display ahead of the auction at St Marys in the Castle, in Pelham
Crescent, Hastings, from 21 to 23 June.