Paintings

by Ian Gibson

I am a Worcestershire based artist working mainly in watercolour. The paintings shown here are recent examples of what I call rural surrealism in which I have used the raw material of my local landscape to create startling and unexpected images.

As a freelance artist I have always produced naturalistic watercolour paintings and line drawings with subject matter ranging from townscenes, seascapes, portraits and transport to artists impressions for the construction industry.

While painting, purely from plans, a prospective aerial view of several houses on a sloping site it suddenly struck me that I now had sufficient skills to paint anything I could imagine and could havesome fun with

perspective and composition. As I am used to painting landscapes and buildings it was natural that this would be the first area I wanted to explore and I soon realised that these new pictures were becoming surrealist.

Surrealism as an artform was first described in the 1920s and since the days of famous artists such as Magritte and Dali the form has diversified in many ways such as in modern advertising where distortion of reality is used to create a fresh image for an over familiar product. In order for surrealism to convince it has to be based on reality and this means thata good naturalistic painting technique is essential for the effect to work.

Huge masses can float in space, impossible

structures can be created from familiar objects and strange patterns can be created in everyday surroundings.What I soon discovered was that these new images suggested meanings that added extra depth to the work. For instance by extending the columns of the pumproom building in Cheltenham the new shape suggested stage curtains or even the tentacles of some octopus-like sea creature.

Surrealism is a field where the bizarre imagery of dreams is used to suggest themes. Although my ideas are not from dreams (so far!) I seem to imagine ideas fairly easily and I try not to analyse them too much. Most of the sketch preparation work for a painting involves arranging the elements into a balanced composition.

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Recent Exhibitions

LOOK AGAIN Exhibition Number 8 Community Arts Centre Gallery, 8 High Street, Pershore, Worcestershire. 8th October to 28th October 2009

THE STONE GALLERY 93 High Street Burford Oxfordshire. November 09 ongoing