I paint most often at a scale of 4’ x 4’, and work from home. My paintings have as a whole spanned a broad area of interests. They have explored my interests in music, modern graphic design, painting’s history, modern music, drum n’ bass hip hop, trance, techno etc. Graffiti Japanese art and culture such as comics(manga) cartoon (animé), toys,
modern-music sub culture etc. Modern and past; contemporary art Post-Modernism and classical modernism.
I gained a 2.1 degree on leaving college and have since been working as a painter exhibiting through involvement in a number of art groups in the South West. In 2004 I completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at Falmouth.
Some of the paintings seek to create images that work as visual equivalents to music; stemming back to Kandinsky, who also sought to make visual equivalents to music,he talked of musical notes having their representation visually as certain colours: synaesthesia: the concept of hearing colours and seeing sounds.
The influence of Kandinsky’s spiritual romanticism, where transcendentalism in modernism has its roots; has made itself apparent in my works through a strong aesthetic abstraction exploring harmonies against chaotic forms which have roots in natural forms.
There is a spiritualism implied through these forms which leads to a type of Zen aesthetic. This aesthetic balances between an influence of traditional Japanese art and a more modern vision stemming from Manga. This is also fused with graffiti, pop art, and the influence of such painters as Fiona Rae and the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
The painting Napoleon the Deceased (NA PARTE) is taken from David’s painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the alps at the pass of St Bernard. It is painted on the 4’x 4’ format I am used to, and as the original is rectangle rather than square I have cropped the image losing the very top and bottom of the painting. This is where the title has evolved to have meaning as ‘Bonaparte ‘, inscribed into the rock in the left hand bottom corner of David’s original has become: NA PARTE. It seems to me that the title of my work is like pigeon French, meaning never part, or never left. This is because the painting makes reference to Glenn Brown’s images, particularly those Aubarch inspired works. Browns works are putrescent and rotting, yet mirror flat, the reference to the undead and the death of painting/against its undying power, is used in my painting, although I have developed a textured surface using a roller each day for up to six months to achieve a mould like surface of hills and valleys, self-similar across the picture plane. This is a strange effect, different to both the mirror flatness of brown and the painted impasto of Aubarch.
To summarize the works in the exhibition are an attempt to create a post-modernist symphony of various influences through out the history of painting with a heavy leaning towards the great painter Van Gogh taking from him his expressionist line, intense colour and love for Japanese art. Then adding the painters Matisse, Kandinsky,Picasso amongst others creating contemporary pieces with a n awareness an nod to the artists of to day such as Glenn Brown and Fiona Rae.

Luke Austin-Heywood Tel.01209 820223 … Read More