Paul Newman’s vision of hybridity and painterly dream worlds have an intoxicatingly colourful and enigmatic hold over his viewers. Landscapes populated with pattered areas of abstraction, historic views, and strange figures intrigue and puzzle. Portraits of monster like creatures set against decorative yet haptic backgrounds seem an ode to the sensibility of Francis Bacon, while impasto like studies of still life objects recall contemporary painting such as that of Wayne Thiebaud and Philip Guston.

Newman notes an interest in the aesthetic of horror films, and the artwork of Paul Nash and Giorgio de Chirico, as well as Franz Kafka’s The Trial and Metamorphosis citing his admiration for the “surreal juxtaposition of everyday domestic and urban settings with the bizarre, and a tonal balance of the melancholy and the sinister”. These elements converge to infuse Newman’s artwork with a sense of eerie strangeness. In the context of these myriad influences and affinities, the painter has developed a lush world of symbols and narratives depicted in a tactile surface that blooms with ideas, metaphor, and the enigmatic. 

All elements of Newman’s practice are connected through an artistic approach best described as immersive collage and experimental iconography. In landscapes clouded by abstracted areas of paint, and historic figures, Newman allows a mysterious yet theatrical narrative to emerge. Indeed, the theatrical remains at the core of the artist’s approach and as such the series English Gothic is described by the painter as a tableau, narratival arcs set in landscape. To create these scenes the artist superimposes photographic elements over a historic landscape. In the building of surface, and tonality, the artist initially leaves areas of work and process visible, the first layer of ground contrasting with preliminary drawing and built areas of painting and detail. 

In more abstract works, the artist’s absorbing use of texture and collage produces a surface made of assemblage, layering, borrowing and an imaginative reconfiguring of emblems, motifs, patterns, and hues. 

Rosa JH Berland

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BIOGRAPHY 

A teaching artist and curator, Newman holds his MA with Distinction, Fine Art, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, University of Central England, and his Honours BA, Fine Art, University of Reading. Paul teaches at Birmingham School of Art & Loughborough University School of Art

The artist is the recipient of various awards including multiple Arts Council of England Grants (2015, 2014, 2012 and 2006), The Nottingham Castle Open and The West Midlands Open Photography Prize, 2012, among others.

Group exhibitions include; 2021 Darkness at Noon APT Gallery London, 2017 Contemporary Masters from Britain Yantai Art Museum, Artall Gallery, Nanjing, Jiangsu Art Gallery, Nanjing and the Tianjin Academy of Fine Art, China, 2017 The Future at The Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, Coventry.

Solo exhibitions include: 2019 Its Not the End of the World, Birmingham School of Art, 2018 English Gothic, Artifact, Stirchley, Birmingham. 2015 Stage, mac Birmingham, 2013 After the Flood, Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery

Curated group projects include Monster Club I & II 2013 -17, 2017 Real Fabrications for Stryx Gallery, Birmingham.

Performance works include; The Rehearsal of Frankenstein & Don’t be Afraid with Nita Newman 2018-2020 for Styx & Vivid, Birmingham. Zero hrs & Napkin with David Miller 2015 & 2012, Selfridges Birmingham & The Vaults Birmingham

Newman’s work is found in the New Art Gallery Wallsall, Priseman Seabrook Collection, United Kingdom, The Jiangsu Museum of Art, China, and numerous international private collections.

Newman is a member of Contemporary British Painting and currently interviews artists for their artist of the month section. 

https://paul-newman.net/