Paul EllikerPainting
Paul Elliker |
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email:
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paulelliker@yahoo.co.uk | |
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www:
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BA (hons) Fine Art Liverpool John Moores University
Painting |
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statement:
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My work addresses the romantic and utopian notions of the landscape in bold and colourful large-scale paintings. Making use of second hand source material, my paintings do not depict places that exist in reality, but offer a response to the ideal of the untouched natural environment lodged in our cultural consciousness. With their perfect composition and unconventional colours my paintings play with the idea of romantic escape whilst quickly reminding viewers of their inherent impossibility.
A major part in the process of making these paintings is the manipulation of found imagery. I appropriate images from popular-culture sources including children’s book illustrations, greeting cards and school textbooks. Once chosen, selected images are scanned into a computer, manipulated and enlarged onto canvas. The works are often painted using flat acrylic colour to emphasise the artificiality of the original source material. My contact with the natural environment has become increasingly detached and limited to visions created through such media as television, Internet, billboard and magazine. This detached experience of the natural world, highlighted in the 21 st century, has been recreated and designed throughout the history of landscape art. This is shown in the calculated constructions of Poussin and Lorraine along with the conventions dictated by the Academies. It is this experience of nature that helps to inform my landscape paintings. The culture in which I live has developed the idea of what I will call landscape templates. These landscape templates are in place and ready to act for anyone as backdrops for products, or, as the product itself. Found in almost any location or medium these templates are heavily contrived and embedded in our cultural consciousness. Landscape templates are now so prevalent; it is not uncommon for one to look at any given natural scene and to subsequently tap into one of the many stereotypical landscape templates available. This framing and familiarising of the natural scene is something that I try to use to my advantage when making my landscape paintings. Recently, I have been working on a series of paintings focusing upon illustrations of geological phenomena. The analytical nature of the work conflicts with traditional representations of the landscape. In contrast to Romanticism’s religious symbolism, the paintings respond to our environment, in which the natural world is processed, packaged and consumed many times over. |
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news:
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Solo show at Kirkby Gallery – early 2006
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exhibitions:
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Selected Group Shows
2005 Polished T Gallery Launch, Liverpool 1999 D’ya want fries with that? Custard Factory, Birmingham Art Fairs 2005 Manchester Art Fair, G Mex Manchester 2004 Manchester Art Show, G Mex, Manchester Awards 2005 N.A.P.A Award Selected Publications and Reviews 2005 Flux, Issue 48 – The Phoenix Rises Collections 2005 Manchester City Art Gallery Patrons Loan Scheme |
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gallery
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all images are copyright the artist unless otherwise stated
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‘Liberty Ridge’ 1 Acrylic on canvas – 6.5′ x 5′
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‘Liberty Ridge’ 2 Acrylic on canvas – 6.5′ x 5′
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‘For My Husband’ Acrylic on canvas- 8.5′ x 6.5′
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‘Macpac Vamoose’ Acrylic on canvas – 7′ x 4.5′
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‘Mambo Nomads’ Acrylic on canvas – 6.5′ x 5′
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‘Mambo Nomads’ in Walker Gallery – John Moores 23.
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