BARRIE HOUGHTON
Mixed Media Paintings
27th October – 22nd November ’08
Barrie’s association with The Gallery spans over 15 years, during which time he has regularly shown his works on paper and canvas in mixed and solo exhibitions.
Having studied at St Martin’s School, London, Barrie has developed a wonderfully loose, ‘painterly’ and often dramatic technique that is by no means conventional. Perhaps his free, almost Turner-esque style can be attributed to his rather ‘laissez faire’ approach to painting - he is also quite happy to discard a high proportion of his works in their early stages if they don’t quite ‘work’.
When working with watercolour, his starting point is a series of broad washes made with a very wide, wet brush on heavy gauge, extra absorbent paper. The pools of colour are allowed to find their own way across the paper, merging and blending as they go, assisted only by gravity and the occasional pivotal movement when a drawing pin might be removed from one corner. It is at this point that the painting’s destiny is determined - to be continued or binned? Those sheets lucky enough to have been granted a stay of execution are further subjected to a combination of mopping, scrubbing and over-painting until the desired dramatic effect is achieved.
Drawing inspiration from his travels around the world and his beloved home county in particular, Barrie has always been well-known for his semi-abstracted landscapes, where often the image is intersected with a sudden splash of colour to create a sense of intrigue and draw the eye.
Recent solo shows have seen the figurative aspect of his paintings becoming more prominent and also a further development of his experimentation with portraiture. Barrie dares to use unusual and sometimes shocking colours to accentuate and highlight the characteristics and imperfections of the characters’ features. So although the eye may see a face that is green and blue with a splattering of magenta, the brain is able to recognise the shapes and make sense of it all even though the colours may be out of context. Who needs art to be spoon-fed?
Monday - Saturday 9.30 am - 5.00 pm
A selection of images from the Exhibition will be available to view on the web site from Saturday 20th September - www.artone.co.uk