Meeting Lloyd Durling had been long coming and much anticipated. His reputation as a painter of hauntingly atmospheric abstractions, deeply embedded in a personal engagement with history, memory, and place, had preceded him. We meet at his flat in Bermondsey, where his passion for art is immediately apparent—works by known artists line the walls, and a well-thumbed copy of Kafka rests among his readings. The space reflects his preoccupations: an interest in psychogeography, an affinity for historical craftsmanship, and a deep sensitivity to the textures of experience.
Colour as an Emotional Register
Durling’s paintings vibrate with colour—burnt oranges, pale blues, acidic yellows, and deep blacks, all layered and interwoven with both precision and spontaneity. The materiality of oil paint and oil stick plays a crucial role, as pigment is built up, scraped back, and reworked to create surfaces that seem in flux. His approach is as much about removal as it is about application—colours emerge through layering, revealing traces of past gestures like the ghosts of medieval frescoes weathered by time.
His palette resists the purely harmonious; it is both lyrical and discordant, an interplay of control and expressive chance. The interplay of warm and cool tones, structured edges and loose painterly flourishes, generates a sense of tension—forms hover, shift, and dissolve. The paintings are not simply colour fields but maps of experience, where hues act as psychological markers of place, history, and sensation.
Texture, Mark-Making, and the Edge of Form
Durling’s works inhabit the liminal space between painting and drawing, with an intense engagement in surface quality. "Texture is as important as colour," he notes, describing the contrast between smooth linen and the built-up density of oil stick and paint. There’s a physicality to his practice—gestures that feel deliberate yet fleeting, where each mark carries weight, as if capturing a moment of transition.
This sense of precariousness extends to his forms: pillars, spheres, and fragmented geometries teeter on the edge of stability. The black borders that often frame his compositions suggest both containment and rupture—a boundary that threatens to break apart. These tensions lend the work a structural elegance, balancing abstraction with the echo of something almost recognisable, yet ultimately elusive.
Walking as a Method of Discovery
Durling’s practice is inseparable from walking. His work is rooted in movement, in the act of traversing landscapes—whether through London’s streets or further afield. "I like to walk for hours, sometimes months," he explains, describing how the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other brings him into contact with forgotten, unassuming fragments of history. His recent walk along the remnants of the Roman Wall in London is emblematic of his approach. Though fragmented and partially obscured, its presence lingers, much like the echoes of history in his paintings.
His fascination with turf mazes—a rare, ancient form of labyrinthine design found in England—further illustrates this preoccupation. Unlike hedge mazes, these are low to the ground, designed to be walked rather than puzzled through. "They're part-performative, part-contemplative," he says, noting their resonance with his broader artistic concerns. Only eight remain in the UK, their survival dependent on continuous maintenance. The idea of an ephemeral, overlooked form—one that is both historical and transient—feels deeply aligned with his work.
The Influence of History and the Unseen
While his paintings are abstract, they carry a weight of historical and material references. Medieval wall paintings, stained glass, and the luminous surfaces of late medieval and early Renaissance art feed into his visual language, though not overtly. "There's something of their essence that drives the work," he says. Rather than literal representation, he is drawn to the way history leaves traces, how time transforms and reimagines materials.
Durling’s work often plays with duality—form and non-form, presence and absence. This was particularly evident in his 2010 work "Parade", which garnered attention for its ability to evoke something intangible, a shimmering presence that is neither fully solid nor entirely void. His layering of marks and muted, sometimes ghostly palette suggest both the presence of something solid and its slow erosion—echoing the landscapes he walks through.
This preoccupation with impermanence was also highlighted in his exhibition at Château de Sacy, where his paintings were discussed in the context of their ability to engage with history while remaining elusive, resistant to singular interpretation. The works have a spectral quality, suggesting memory as something unstable and subject to shifts in perception.
Memory Over Photography
One of the more intriguing aspects of Durling’s process is his refusal to use photography as a reference. "I don’t take photos," he says plainly. Instead, he relies on memory, sketching, and the natural distortion that comes with time. "Things change—your mind corrupts them, they shift." This fluidity, this sense of recall rather than reproduction, imbues his paintings with a dreamlike quality, as if they are impressions of places rather than depictions of them.
Literary and Psychological Undercurrents
A book by Franz Kafka rests within reach, a telling detail. Literature, particularly the unsettling, the uncanny, plays a role in his thinking. He names Robert Aickman and Arthur Machen—writers known for their eerie, psychological takes on landscape and place—as key influences. This links back to his interest in psychogeography, a term coined by the Situationists to describe the way places shape emotions and perceptions. "I’m interested in how landscape, memory, and the subconscious interact," he notes.
His reading extends into philosophy, though not in a strictly academic sense. He is drawn to history and fiction, preferring writing that questions reality rather than defines it.
The Art Collection and Aesthetic Sensibility
Durling's living space reflects this same curiosity. Among the works on his walls are prints by Paul Nash—a painter known for his war landscapes and surrealist-tinged visions of the English countryside—and pieces by Gordon Dalton. These choices make sense; Nash’s ability to imbue landscape with emotion mirrors Durling’s own approach.
His appreciation extends beyond paintings—he has an eye for antiques, too. He gestures towards an Indian ebony planter’s chair, admiring its solid craftsmanship and history. His collecting is not just about aesthetics but about objects carrying a story, much like his own work.
Recognitions and Artistic Career
Durling has exhibited widely in the UK, Europe, and beyond, with notable solo shows including Maisons Fragiles at Elms Window Gallery, London (2023), Trigger Hair at Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, South Korea (2019), and Bit Part at Château de Sacy, France (2011). His work has been included in prestigious collections, including the Whitworth Art Gallery (UK), Progressive Art Collection (USA), and Nomura Bank (Japan).
A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, he has also been awarded the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust and exhibited at institutions such as Hauser & Wirth, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the Whitworth Art Gallery. His continued engagement with drawing, painting, and material experimentation places him firmly within the evolving discourse of contemporary abstraction.
The Future: A Shift in Scale and Visibility
At a time when the art world often prioritises digital visibility, Durling’s reluctance to engage with technology is notable. Yet his paintings do not suffer for it; if anything, they gain an authenticity, a sense of being deeply lived-in experiences rather than immediate responses.
Durling’s work is a meditation on memory, materiality, and place. His use of colour, texture, and fragmented form speaks to an interest in surfaces that hold history—where the marks, like half-remembered images, flicker in and out of resolution. His paintings resist easy categorisation, existing instead as visual palimpsests—layered, shifting, and rich with the traces of time and experience.
Whether in his use of jewel-like medieval hues, the physicality of oil stick, or the veiled allusions to text and architecture, Durling’s work invites us to linger in the space between recognition and mystery, where colour and mark become their own language of memory.
