Garry Raymond-Pereira MA

Artist Statement

Without wishing to sound dramatic, my life has been and continues to be a devotion to painting.  It is the area that I feel most natural and excepted within.  Each new work a challenge, offering up its own character and feel.  My aim always being to offer up something of its original source, some form of connection to the human condition, and a continuing investigation into the properties of paint (which I increasingly find I make myself).The process of my most recent work, has been in some ways semi-traditional.  I go out and make small studies that are collaged to form compositions in the own right.  These (discrete) location collages go on to inform the increasingly large scale studio works, where the studio light, radio warmth and usually ‘dated’ punk music, all lay their marks on the work too.

I am naturally drawn to ‘empty space’, large expanses of coastline, mountain ranges, lochs and also less obviously the distant Chelsea horizon from south of the river all give me ‘space to work out ideas’.  My recent trip to Glencoe and the Highlands of Scotland, where cell phones had ‘no signal’, offered me a fertile source for large canvases – ‘No Blackberries’ and the ambiguously titled ‘ello Mrs Jones’.

I have over the last few years spent increasingly long periods of time in Scotland and North Wales making paintings.  It is important to me that I spend time in places I paint.  I never want to make pastiches of places or comments that are ill considered.  By spending some time getting to know the subject well, informs not only me but also the work.

So, my manifesto is as always to continue to make the work that leaks from me naturally, as well as to continue with my investigation into paint and of course, continue to play ‘dated’ punk music.