Colin Bailey is an artist/printmaker living and working in Hastings, East Sussex after living in Rye for ten years and Kings Cross, London for fifteen years. Originally an etcher, and still with a printmaker’s instinct for multiple images, he has embraced the advance of recent technology through the use of digital photography, high resolution scanning and archival quality giclée printing.

Whilst in Rye he recognised the potential of the internet and registered Ryepress.com as a showcase for his then mainly Rye based etchings. Now in Hastings, he works on a growing series of paintings which he scans and issues as limited edition giclée prints, handling this whole process himself in order to maintain artistic integrity.

As well as traditional views of Rye & Hastings, there is now a section of work exploring the textures and structures of Rye Bay (the East Sussex coast between Hastings and Dungeness). Ancient groynes, banks of constantly shifting shingle, fishing boats drying on the beach, and the prehistoric coast at the foot of the cliffs at Rock-a-Nore are examined in paintings with an almost abstract scale and attention to detail. Close-up and often ambiguous, these images of peeling, faded paintwork, rusting metal and cracked, bleached wood chart the results of man-made and natural structures slowly breaking up through the relentless onslaught of rain, wind, sun, sea, sand and time.

Colin Bailey exhibits frequently in various venues in Rye & Hastings.