Member since Thursday 10th Jan, 2013
After graduating from Bradford University with a BA in fine art painting and photography, I took a studio space at the Thornton Art Mill (Bradford), but not with brushes and paint but instead with a mig-welder and tin snips and started making candle sticks, lamps and large sculptural globes out of scrap metal sought from the many scrap yards found in Bradford at the time. I used to sell my work at the Leeds Arches arcade, in the days when it was a haven for new artists prepared to sit out the freezing cold in the winter to sell their work. I also undertook a number of commissions to make shop fittings for Leeds based shops, including a range of metal frame manikins and an organic looking hat stand. I also exhibited my work at the Design Exchange in Bradford’s Little Germany district.
After a couple of years making the globes a gap of almost a 20 years interrupted my art, but in 2011 my promise to myself to convert the garage into a studio finally came into being and I started to paint again. My first canvas was actually started pre the conversion and was the start of my work on the Red House - a 1 meter square canvas that bore the brunt of the 20 year gap taking bold and heavy brush stroke after brush stroke. This canvas was later re-worked in the foreground and still hangs in my studio as testament to the end of my art drought.
I work in acrylics with both brush and airbrush as I like the speed of work and permanence of finish this medium offers, especially important with the airbrush work as the detailed masking needed to achieve the crisp line could lift other medium. The very same attractive qualities of acrylic do however present problems with the airbrush and thorough cleaning between each colour is essential, however, rather than this being a delay in progressing the work I actually find it forces me to take time to reflect on the paint layer I have just applied before applying the next.
I started my passion for airbrush when I was studying ‘A’ level art. I had received a couple of books on Fantasy Art one Christmas and was amazed by the work of Jim Burns, Syd Mead, Chris Foss, Boris Vallejo and many others. I started off trying to replicate their work, but found my own style after a while and am so glad I kept all my airbrush equipment in the loft. Airbrush is magical tool and it never fails to delight me as the image begins to take form.
My Portfolio currently only shows my airbrush work, this is primarily because I have been working on a number of pieces following successful approaches to two galleries in my home city of York in January this year. This in turn had followed encouragement from friends after they commissioned me to do a piece for a couple moving to Hong Kong ‘Bon Voyage’. I will add some of my canvas work soon.
The Red House:
The meaning behind the Red House ‘icon’ did not initially present itself to me on that first drought breaking canvas, but after time playing with it on other images and considering why I was struck by this image the meaning began to unveil itself to me. The Red House symbolises the place where I keep my memories, thoughts and ideas. Its lack of doors and windows reflecting the private nature of this keepsake, you can’t look in, but instead have elements of the content revealed to you within the painting.
The Red House sits either at the top of the globe or on top of a hill making it a primary element to the image, but its lack of detail also isolates it from the overall image content.
The furry people (AKA cats) are an important part of our lives and therefore feature quite often in the Red House paintings. They are a great source of fun, companionship and fond memories.
