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Artist Talk

Saturday 18 May 2024 - Scarborough

  • 20 British pounds
  • Scarborough - Workshops & Courses

Available spaces


Saturday 18 May 2024 10am - 1pm with Charles Williams (President of the Watercolour Society) What do you do as a visual artist in the UK, at this historical moment? How do you make sense of it? I have had a thirty-plus year career, working as a visual artist, a painter, in the British Art scene. It hasn’t been especially remarkable, but I have consistently maintained my practice (although I feel uncomfortable about calling it that) and a studio and an exhibition schedule in all of that time. Like many artists, I have taught in Higher Education, but only for ten years. I am acutely aware of the different contexts in which artists find meaning and status, and I have never become resigned to or comfortable with any of them. I recently completed a PhD on the subject of my own work, in an attempt to understand it, and one of the things that emerged was an awareness of my engagement with certain paintings from the canon of Western art history. I will spend the morning talking about my research interest in Joseph Highmore’s painting Mr Oldham And His Friends, Annibale Carracci’s The Butcher's Shop and GD Tiepolo’s Il Mondo Nuovo, among others, in relation to the question ‘why aren’t art students taught to draw any more?’ This takes me into the potentially interesting territory of the role of the visual arts, and painting in particular, in contemporary culture, and what being a visual artist means. Later, I will extend the conversation to my own work and career, and I will talk about my PhD and what that meant to me. What I hope to do is to make art history and what might seem to be rather dull, old paintings, interesting - to demonstrate how I, for one, connect with it in order to find ways of making sense of my own role in the world. This talk takes place at: North Yorks Art School 2-4 South Street Scarborough YO11 2BP Refreshments included.


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