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Reviews
‘Symons' expressive brush-strokes and the richly palpable colours they transfer to canvas or paper are literally the medium between himself and the subject matter, defining both the landscape forms he is contemplating and his emotional response whilst painting them.
The overwhelming sense of isolation in Symons’ work - recognisable on its most superficial level in the complete absence of both human and animal life - invests his imagery with an uncompromisingly bleak yet powerful ability to disturb. His baleful, if ultimately redeemable, vision of country wastelands and sea threatened coastlines is emotively resonant to anyone with half an eye to spare for our beleaguered countryside. At the same time, he exults in the elemental forces that enable nature to recreate itself - many of his pictures are a celebration of seasonal variations witnessed at a specific time and place - and our own capacity as fellow observers to seek out such moments. It is not always a consoling vision of what is still essentially a man-dominated world that is often sorely pressed and haphazardly controlled, but one re-enforced by a sentient eye and a muscular vigour in the handling of paint that questions and challenges our often flawed relationship with nature.’
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