RICHARD CARTWRIGHT
Contemporary Artists
Bath
PAST EXHIBITIONS - click Artist's profile (above)
Richard’s paintings have been extremely popular with collectors for many years now. The attraction of Richard's work is the lasting appeal of the painting as each spectator brings his/her own experience to the work and is captivated by the possibilities that are never fully resolved. Often there is an air of expectancy in the work and the viewer is left wondering what has happened or is soon to happen.
RICHARD CARTWRIGHT
Richard Cartwright, born in 1951, studied at Goldsmith's College School of Art, and now lives and works in Bristol.
Richard believes painting to be a journey that reflects the elasticity and mystery of life. He paints what we hold inwardly in our mind’s eye: a landscape, an image offering solace, reflection and stillness amidst a fast-paced contemporary life-style. The effect on one is like an aroma or lyric reminding us of a forgotten experience, of a breathable “vastscape” transcending our daily lives.
Working often in pastel - an unusual medium for large works - each painting is characterised by an intense feeling of colour and atmosphere radiating from the careful layering of the medium. Cartwright’s use of light is enchanting: he works at night, giving the pictures a romantic and mysterious atmosphere. The absence of daylight draws attention to the presence of moonlight in the landscapes and subdued lighting in the intimate interiors.
'Meet me in the Silence' - pdf catalogue
Enchanting, and occasionally disconcerting, his landscapes are often captured in dusk-light or night-light: when one begins to see beyond the world’s hemisphere to the stars billions of miles away. The human presence is a pinprick of existence, evoking a yearning of the spirit in a world of silent mystery. Cartwright sees it as significant that we are drawn in by the smallest, most transient human presence - a miniature tent, road, house or person - within a landscape and how it alters it.
'Looking for Love' - pdf catalogue
Cartwright perceives life as a Romantic endeavour and journey, “a perception of oneself as slightly solitary, like a fox – a self-made mythology”, and wonders how far you can go with Romance before it becomes unreal.
'The Whole Wide World' - pdf catalogue
Painting usually after midnight, Richard Cartwright finds that once darkness encroaches “you can see beyond the world’s hemisphere to the stars billions of miles away”. Many of his paintings depict this light, or the turning towards this light.
'The Holy Ground' - pdf catalogue
Working predominantly in oil or pastel, he works large scale creating an intense feeling of iridescent colour and atmosphere; and uses forms to evoke dormant scenes hidden in our psyche. Invariably in all his landscapes, nocturnes, nudes and interiors we sense the Romance of the hermit.