Martin Hearne - A Bigger Bradford
Trapezium Gallery were pleased to present A Bigger Bradford by Martin Hearne, an exhibition of paintings that explores his experience of living in the city of Bradford.
Cafe Roberts Park Saltaire. Various Media on PaperMartin explains, “In these recent paintings, I have made an attempt to reflect my everyday experience of the city of Bradford and to make a record of a familiar place. They are an attempt to paint the city in a way that recreates some new aspect of that familiar experience.”
Martin’s paintings are urban landscapes based on a variety of source material collected and made by traveling along the same streets every day. Regularly seeing the same characters going to work at the same time, parents taking the kids to school each weekday and the same buildings in changing light and weather.
On The Street. Bradford. Gouache studySome are started by an interest in the lighting effects seen on the side of a building the aesthetic delight in the atmosphere. The the striking colour effects of modern shop fronts and the chance juxtaposition of urban colours.
Many of the paintings are collaged together from different sources including memory, direct observations, photographs and/or drawings. These collages are often a combination different locations with superimposed figures that are made to conform to a convincing and conventional depiction of pictorial space but are in-fact imaginary spaces.
Oak Lane. Bradford. Oil on CanvasPeople are portrayed against the backdrop of an urban/industrial landscape one where the old Victorian city merges with the new world of multicultural Bradford.
“The paintings explore the relationship between the figure and the landscape, or the figure in the landscape,” is how Martin describes his painting process; “I see the act of painting as a performance of sorts where the chance and randomness of the fluid paint is channelled into a mark resembling or making a connection with the visual experience.”
Dates:
2nd to 22nd July 2022
Artists:
Martin Hearne