Arts & Listings

ELEMENTS AT THE GXGALLERY

23 April 2009

Michael Holland
news@southwarknews.org

The Elements at GXgallery is an exhibition of new works by Colin Halliday.

Halliday has developed a real feel for landscape and says this of his work: 'When the English Lake District was first written about as a place of beauty rather than the barren wilderness it had been thought of, visitors would go to the places recommended and try to feel the prescribed feelings they were told they should feel.

So when Ruskin came along and suggested that ones own feelings and indeed ones own path was more important then I feel the true Romantic ideal was born.'

It was in retrospect that the Historians used the term Romantic to describe what was in truth a group of people with very different ideas. Feelings are important and perhaps the closest we can get to instinct, for this reason Colin chose to paint from the gut and forget about trying to make an image look hyper realistic.

'I do not want to hide the brushstrokes or the fact that this is a painting, it is a record of what is seen but also what is felt.' One is constantly drawn back to the surface and the beauty of individual marks and effects and when such apparently random marks are viewed from a distance they make sense and present a view, a Landscape.

The freedom of gesture seeming to echo the very nature of nature, for it is not only what one paints but also how one paints that tells the story. The paintings are not just about the Landscape of a place but tell of a philosophy for Life.

GXgallery 43 Denmark Hill SE5 25 April - 7 May 2009
0207 703 8396 ~ www.gxgallery.com

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