Artist Statement

 

 

 

I am an expressionist painter whose work is primarily concerned with the way surface and colour interact on the picture plane. This usually takes me into the realms of pure abstraction (remembering of course that all depictions are abstractions). I am process-led in that my paintings are resolved by the act of painting itself. In one sense this could be interpreted as my subconscious showing me the way forward, but at the same time I am consciously striving for a feeling of falling into a lost place, of finding my own Arcadia, by accident or design.

I am inspired by Scottish artists such as Barbara Rae (her use of colour and a meditative approach to landscape painting) and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who continued producing challenging, colourful abstract works until her death at 92.  Callum Innes and Alison Watt inspire me too. The American artists Richard Diebenkorn, Milton Avery, Ellsworth Kelly and the Irish/American Sean Scully have also shown me that it is possible and desirable to strive for a kind of complex simplicity.

My Fieldscape series of paintings are response-based rather than accurate depictions of places. At the moment I am influenced by the rolling hills and field patterns in rural Aberdeenshire and Moray, and try to use optimistic colours as a counterbalance to the economic gloom.

I hope my paintings will invoke in the viewer an ambiguity of perception, or as Matisse put it some 'petite sensations'. This in turn should lead to a kind of pleasurable tension, causing an overwhelming desire to own one!

 

brian crawford young

July 2010