Paintings for the ‘Manchester made me’ exhibition

I have the pleasure of presenting some of my newest paintings in the ‘Manchester made me’ exhibition at Obeid Galleries as part of the Dead Dead Good Weekend in Northwich. Music has always been a key influence on me and on my work, so to have the opportunity to create some paintings with a direct link to music that I love was a real privilege.

The starting point for Elegia was a series of paintings entitled Licht und blindheit that I made this winter in the Peaks above Macclesfield (the home town of Ian Curtis). The title of these paintings Licht und blindhiet (or, Light and blindness, in translation) may seem obscure, however it is the title of the record on which Atmosphere by Joy Division first appeared. I was listening to Joy Division at the time I made the paintings, and the snow covered Peaks starkly reflecting the bright sunlight fitted so well with the notion of light and blindness.

These paintings then led me to paint Elegia, a larger scale studio piece using my original paintings as source material, of course by this time the snow had melted away and the land was becoming warmer, things had transformed. The title Elegia is a reference to a New Order track of the same name, an epic instrumental track written in the memory of Ian Curtis. The notion of conveying the indefinable without words through abstract forms of expression.

Most people are probably familiar with the genius which is Fools gold by The Stone Roses, this has always been a favourite track of mine. Everything about it is just spot on, the lyrics, the drums, the groove, the space, the expansion. Put simply this is just my abstract visual interpretation.

The morning after the night before (Post-rave Pennines), probably doesn’t need much explaining: that need to reconnect with the elemental and natural after a night well spent dancing away to electronic beats, the edge of moodiness.