2023
Acrylic and egg tempera on canvas
30 x 30cm
£975
Acrylic and egg tempera on panel
25 x 38cm
Sold
Acrylic and egg tempera
on board
30 x 30cm
Sold
Acrylic and gesso on canvas
35 x 35cm
£950
Acrylic and egg tempera on board
20 x 20cm
£775
Oil stick and acrylic on canvas
40 x 40cm
£1650
Acrylic and egg tempera
on board
30 x 30cm
Framed
£950
Graham Ward examines themes of stillness and reflection in his figural subject-matter. Often, the condition of the individual seems apart from the viewer, yet they remain somehow engaged within the works.
Children and animals are an important facet, each concerned with their place within the scheme of the image. He frequently revisits themes and subjects as part of an ongoing visual vocabulary.
Working in acrylics, Ward’s paintings are often finished with egg tempera, which perhaps lends his work a sense of the antique methods of the Romanesque – and in particular, the works of the early Spanish Schools that he loves. The liminal subject-matter discovered in manuscripts and in wall-paintings (chiefly for Ward, the astonishing freshness of the 12th-century frescoes in the Pantheon of San Isidro in Leon, a place that continues to fascinate and inspire him), he is drawn to the spiritual in painting, and is fascinated by the notion of pilgrimage and of ‘arrival’. Darkness and light in his work is intentional. He repeatedly walks the ancient pilgrim roads to Santiago de Compostela in the North of Spain, the routes to and the obsession with – something that continues to be a major impetus in his work.
Photograph by Jane Wildgoose, courtesy and copyright of the Wildgoose Memorial Library.