Grant Watson British, b. 1966
Grant Watson’s colourfully expressive paintings include landscapes, studies of scenes of every day urban life, cityscapes and still lives. Every day and pastoral subjects seem imbued with a passion for heightened hues, contrast, texture and as well the act of painting. Much of Grant’s painting is finished in one session, and the neo-Fauvist style of his pictures has a joyful nostalgia, what he describes as a “a mourning of the time that has passed.” Similarly there is a way of treating the surface of the picture that connects Grant’s transformative approach to painting to that of the Fauvists and other classical modernists, whose work was similarly governed by an entirely subjective yet rhythmic treatment of mark making and pigment. The artist notes: I like to transform an image in some way, to take it to unknown territory rather than a literal translation in paint.”
For many, it is the quality of abstraction and voluptuousness of colour in Watson’s work that intrigues, in the way the paint itself seems sometimes a subject. In the paintings, the artist uses the device of schematic division and flatness. He has laid out arrangements of shapes, colours with areas of exposed canvas or white spaces, which as a whole become form and even pattern. Watson’s virtuosity in capturing the relationship between observation and representation and qualities of abstraction make his work startling beautiful.
Of this way of building harmony and dissonance, he shares: “I think at the end of the day all paintings are abstract, by virtue of the fact that they are made up of an arrangement of shapes and colours; I think I relish this fact, perhaps particularly as I come from a background of abstract painting. I use an image as a starting point and respond through form and mark making and attempt to create a rhythmic space within which feelings and sensations can potentially be clarified.”
Rosa JH Berland
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BIOGRAPHY
The artist holds his MA Fine Art, Eastern Illinois University and BA, Fine Art, Portsmouth Polytechnic and is the recipient of the Antonio Ratti Foundation Purchase Prize for Drawing, Advanced Studies in Drawing Course, led by Karel Appel, Eric Fischl, Anish Kapoor and Gerard Garouste.
Select solo shows include: the City Art Museum, Charleston, Illinois and Geraldine Anvari Gallery, London.
Recent group exhibits include:
Matthew Collings, Helen G Blake, Grant Watson, Three Works, Scarborough 2020, Beep painting prize 2020
Castlegate Art Prize 2020, Creekside Open, APT Gallery, London, 2019
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 2019, 2017, 2014, 2009, 2008; 2006, 2004, 2003 and 2002
NEAC Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London, 2019
Espacio Gallery, London, 2019
Royal Glasgow Institute, Kelly Gallery, Glasgow, 2019
Saatchi Gallery, London, 2018
Collect Art Gallery, Cheshire, 2018
Margate Washhouse, Margate and The Brewery Tap UCA Project Space, Folkestone, 2017
Creekside Open, APT Gallery, London, 2015
32SQM Project Space, London, 2015
The Cello Factory, London, 2015
Platform Projects, Art-Athina, Athens, 2015 and 2014
Plymouth College of Art, 2014
ACME Project Space, London, 2013
Lubomirov-Easton, London, 2012
The London Group Open, The Cello Factory, London, 2011
International Emerging Artists, Sothebys, Tel Aviv and Chicago
