Michael Crowther: Bollihope and Others

3 Apr-23 May 2025

Farmer's Boy, 2024, oil on panel. Credit: photo - justin piperger

Overview

New paintings. First solo exhibit from the York studio- sequences of richly coloured oils on panel touching on farm living and the north, beguiling and poetic.

There are a number of titles I have in mind which hover around the paintings. They may appear to have a loose connection to the final image but provide me with necessary fuel while I am working. Two are place names, most people would recognise “Scarboro”, a resort on the Yorkshire coast, few would know “Bollihope”, a place of scattered farms in County Durham. Other titles are more elusive, even evasive: “Off”, “Sideshow”, “Amongst Farm Horses”, “Silly Quid”. Some of these are the result of recent experience and recent reading, others have been around for an age, all of them are rooted in the bucolic, an area in which it seems I have an enduring interest. In the nineteen-eighties I made paintings and drawings of a farmhouse interior, a specific place I remember.  I have large drawings from this time around the house, and related drawings have been ever present in my books, apparently in incubation.

Recent work has followed a period of still life painting. Shells, sea food, nougat, hot cross buns, cake stands, but mostly flowers, were set up on a deep shelf I constructed in the studio. For a long time I painted objects that were in front of me. The paintings were made wet into wet and kept mobile throughout, the final image mostly emerging after an eleventh-hour erasure and repaint. My current paintings have evolved from much of this. Our move back to the north of England has made its own contribution.

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