The choice of the vivid blues that characterise the new paintings owed something to the water, which, whether as river, sea or simply rain, is, a constant element in the English landscape. “I wanted to use strong colours partly as a response to my surroundings, partly as a reaction against them (because things can be very pallid here in winter) but more than that because that vibrancy reflected my new mood.

One of Enrique’s favourite artists, Kandinsky, also inspired the choice. “I can understand what Kandinsky said about colours,” he says, “His belief in their significance. Kandinsky places blue as the colour of spirituality and purity. He describes how the blue in the dress of the Virgin Mary links heaven and earth, the divine to the mundane”. It's a theme that runs through the new paintings, where angels (an omnipresent image on Tyneside thanks to Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North sculpture) fly over the heads of people, or dancers, or hover above the bridges of the Tyne.

“The fine art paintings were commercially very successful and I enjoyed doing them. Creating the illusion of three dimensions is a kind of magic, a game that I liked playing. These new works are not a rejection of that style. Like the buildings on the Newcastle Quayside they are new things that have grown out of the old. We don’t deny our past, but we must move on”.

by Harry Pearson

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