Works from Regeneration
Works from Regeneration
Painting is a conversation with a subject.
In 2017 my wife and I moved to Yorkshire, so I could undertake a project of painting the landscapes of my childhood; the Dales bring my ‘special place’, being born and raised as I was just over the border near Skipton.
What was a journey of artistic self discovery took a serious turn when one of my early oils (Burnsall), quite astonishingly took the Medaille D’ Argent at the 2018 Paris Salon of the famed Societie des Beaux Arts.
Other awards and recognition followed, with one of my ‘portraits of places’ ,(Backstreet Burnley) being taken into the Govt. Art collection after being chosen by Boris Johnson to hang within Downing St as a visual reminder of the debt his administration owed to the so called ‘red wall’ constituencies.
Around the same time, The Bowes Museum commissioned me to create a solo exhibition of paintings for therm and appointed me as their artist in residence for the Norman Cornish Retrospective, (‘Live Cornish masterclass given by ‘natural successor’. Northern Echo Feb 3, 2020), but then the world stopped and my show Regeneration postponed indefinitely.
Over the lockdown I worked up the project anyway, and created a three room show of smaller works, including several triptych pieces to build them around, in the hope it might be reinstated.
When the work was reviewed by the Bowes they felt it deserved a bigger venue and far from cancelling Regeneration they took the view that the pandemic had made staging it urgent and salient and my three room solo show was slated to be the first of their new program of post pandemic ‘landmark shows.’
In a classic case of ‘being careful what one wishes for’, I had the venue I’d always dreamed of but no works a suitably large scale to put in the grand space that is The Bowes Museum’s principal exhibition gallery.
I was delighted beyond words when Tennants expressed an interest in allowing me to show what have now become my preparatory works for Regeneration, and I’ve greatly enjoyed spending the last weeks and months turning what were very much my working documents into a show for you.
Painting is a conversation with a subject and the works in this show have become not just the preparatory pieces for The Bowes Museum, but in many ways what I will do when it is staged at a future venue.
From the artists introduction to the show
