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Andrew's Ark (Thompson's Gallery April 2009 in association with the World Land Trust )
“Evocative,
iconic images of birds & beasts” The Ecologist
“Vivid
paintings in their own right…with current environmental concerns ever more
urgent,
the
timing of the show could not be bettered” Galleries Magazine
“If an important part of conservation is to see nature differently and value it in new and different ways, then Andrew’s Ark provokes just the right response.”
Bruce Pearson, WLT Council Member & former President of the Society of Wildlife Artists
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The theme of much of my work has been a contemplation of the boundaries of the tangible world and that which lies beyond, using a visual language of isolated iconic & archetypal images, often of animals and birds, carefully placed in their pictorial space.
Individually and collectively these iconic creatures are taking on an important new role, as symbols of a looming planetary catastrophe.
February 2009
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Extract from a conversation:
" The starting point is the belief that there is something beyond the material world – something Other. Essentially this is the territory where all spirituality is rooted, whether organised religion or unfocussed secular feeling.
A lot of my painting has been exploring the boundaries between the 2 places – sometimes directly, sometimes more tangentially. Lines from “heaven”, steps & stairs leading into the sky, doorways & windows from one place to another – these are all metaphors for a crossing of those boundaries, just as they were in the early Renaissance (cf Fra Angelico’s Annunciation). I think much of the importance of Craigie Aitchison’s work has been in using simple, accessible and contemporary means to re-establish that symbolic language – and that is a path that I make no apologies for following.
To digress for a moment, apart from those direct metaphors, I think the bridge between the 2 places can also be expressed by colour, and by iconic imagery – of animals etc, of everyday objects, as well as spiritual paraphernalia such as chalices & candles.
A theologian friend is very clear about this concept of Otherness – much clearer than he is about the existence of God. He is feels strongly that certain images (and pieces of music, poetry etc) act as a stepping stone between the material here & now and that which lies beyond. What is reassuring to me is that a theological scholar has arrived at the same conclusion, and that it’s not just the territory of woolly minded artists ................."
June 2007
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In recent years Andrew has travelled and exhibited widely, with residencies in Iceland, Canada and Nepal. These experiences have fed into his development of a wide-ranging visual language, reflecting the complexity of human perceptions. His deceptively simple paintings have eclectic roots, drawing variously on the elemental space & light of Western Scotland, the inner landscape of the subconscious, and iconic images of birds and beasts.
Beautifully composed and making confident use of the visual silence of empty space, there is a recurring contemplative quality and stillness in the work which reaches past the here and now to something beyond.
Thompson's Gallery Sept 2005
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