A Painting Show

31 May-16 Jun 2024

PV 30 May 2024, 6-9pm

Overview

 Karolina Albricht, Ned Armstrong, Klaas Op De Beeck, Veronica Bez, Sophie Birch, Max Boyla, Luke Burton, Ethan Caflisch, Noemi Conan, Ruby Dickson, Grant Foster, Jake Freeman, Alex Gibbs, Gommaar Gilliams, Alex Gilmour, Lily Hargreaves, Sophie Lourdes Knight, Joachim Lambrecht, Holly Mills, Andras Nagy-Sandor, India Nielsen, Paige Perkins, Francisca Pinto, Heidi Ukkonen, Ryan Winnen, Fen De Winter.​

Staffordshire St and PAINT TALK present A Painting Show reflecting and embodying the endless possibilities of paint. Twenty-six painters, with an entire spectrum of working methods and destinations. Expansive, immersive abstraction, a varying trail of graphic language, observed reality, canvases turned in on themselves, portraits, patterns, all manner of heads, architectural structures, collaged,  stitched, scored, dense surfaces, saturated colour,  coupled with the precise rendering of matter. The scale of approach and matter are wide and sweeping.  

Goya’s painting of Saturn Devouring his Son was a lingering presence from the conception of this show. The last master and first modern, Francisco Goya’s (1746-1828), oeuvre spanned aristocratic portraits, Rococo styled tapestry cartoons, etchings and engravings detailing the trauma of war and satirical meditations on society, and toward the end of his career. His painting Saturn Devouring his Son  dominates the poster designed to accompany this exhibition, A Painting Show.  

The life of a painter, the journey and transition from subject to subject, period to period, the ability to tackle all manner of subjects, reaching into deep,  buried recesses of the human psyche. To dig in any direction with conviction and vigour, to move freely and to really sink one’s teeth into each subject. The leaps between subject and narrative should be fluid,  multiple conversations ongoing, the space between the works, subject and manner of approach speak to the capacity of painting to accommodate endless change, and the vitality of painting now.  

Two centuries on, Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son,  could not feel more relevant or timely. The painting reaches deep into the human psyche, our capacity for absolute, unthinkable violence. The transition and transformation to be found in Goya’s work is close to unthinkable. The intensity and power of The Black Paintings demonstrate the infinite possibility of paint, any consideration of an audience, an afterthought.  

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