Richard Friend artists statement
 
view Richard's paintings


I was reasonably confident about drawing but once at college the introduction of colour caused me great excitement if not a little unease. Initially I found myself producing increasingly more vast and complicated canvases covered in coloured squares and rectangles. This was my answer to the problem of colour. This being; how does one place colours next to, or on top of other colours while still retaining their integrity? I found that the only way that I could comfortably paint in colour was to establish a hard line between each block of colour. I found that different colours had their own energy and would appear to sink back into, or stand proud from the canvas. As I worked at these paintings I started to get interested in making these colours ever more vibrant and so I began working in glazes, firstly in Acrylic and later in Oils. During my degree I spent time at the Aquarium in Liverpool marvelling at the myriad colours flashing in the darkness. Days were spent in the Palm House in Sefton Park and in places like Kew and The Eden Project where I sketched the architectural shapes and vibrant hues of plants from around the world. These sketches found themselves worked into paintings of strange and exotic subterranean and submarine worlds, populated by brightly coloured, oddly shaped flora and fauna.

Over the years since leaving college my work has changed but it isn’t too hard to see where the current pieces have come from.

I seem to have moved away from the exotic colours and shapes of my imaginary worlds but I’m still in the same place. The colours are less flashy but they’re no more real. The paintings are informed by my childhood in the countryside of Kent. Some are obviously vegetation and are my interpretation of floral paintings I suppose. In fact the first painting that I did in this style was the first painting that I ever exhibited and was in response to a Flower Festival being held in Sandwich, where I worked at the time. I produced a painting that included flowers (and later had to find flowers that they resembled for titling purposes!) but I found that I was much more interested in the leaves. These later paintings have few flowers and are more to do with the childhood walks that we used to take with our parents in the woods around the village where we lived. I have always loved the way in which a wood can at once appear so beautiful and yet so scary at the same time and defy anyone to walk into a wood alone and not feel a little uneasy. These paintings refer as much to what is hiding in there, as to the play of light on the leaves and branches.

Similarly the other paintings are postcards from places that I’d like to visit (if they existed). The longer I work in London the more I seem to yearn for the countryside and the seaside. As a child I lived for a while in Dymchurch, the home of Dr Syn and I think the scarecrow and the smugglers must have affected me quite deeply. My paintings all seem to have their roots in this dark mystery. We spent all of our family holidays on the South Coast of Cornwall, a county that is awash with mysterious goings on and history. One only has to visit Dozemary pool near to Jamaica Inn to appreciate this fully. In addition the earlier squares and rectangles have survived to lend a “stained glass” appearance to the paintings. Churches also appear in many of the paintings, references perhaps to “other” powers surrounding us. If one looks at the paintings closely I hope that the narrative elements become quite clear. There are definitely things going on but the perpetrators are hidden. However, there is no definitive reading of the paintings, I have my ideas but I’d prefer to leave it up to you to work out your own story.