[tab:works] [tab:biography] Stewart Geddes is President of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA), Honorary RA and RSA, and recently curated Albert Irvin and Abstract Expressionism in conjunction with the Albert Irvin Estate and Tate Gallery, presented at the RWA in Bristol from December 2018 to March 2019.
Formerly Head of Painting at Cardiff School of Art and Design, he is currently a lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Gloucestershire and Associate Lecturer at the Arts University, Bournemouth.

‘I’m interested in the act of painting itself; the way paint behaves and its abundance of different material properties – wetness, transparency, abrupt changes and incremental ones, grittiness and smoothness, quiet moments, shrieking moments, and so on. By focussing on the substance of paint the material is released to communicate directly, so colour can be experienced as colour, and surface as surface and the meanings that can ensue from that.

I’ve recently established an improvised form of painting in which, having decided on a palette, I only partially know what my hand is about to do.
I love this urgent need to make ‘live’ choices as the painting unfolds. It’s a strategized form of risk-taking and an attempt to ‘tap into’ surprising outcomes in an effort to evade caution and break into new territory. Delightfully, the strategy doesn’t usually lead to chaos and incoherence, but when it does, it places me in a position where I care very little, which can be creatively useful.

After this comes a more reflective period, when the painting hangs around in the studio while I wait to come to terms with what I’ve done and move it forward.

I’m currently working with a pictorial language of traversing, meandering lines that run around indeterminate organic-like forms. They establish multiple spatial relations in which forms appear to inhabit deep recessional spaces yet simultaneously assert their place on the painted surface. I’m wondering if these are analogous to places of departure and arrival? They certainly have a relation with the semi-conscious workings of my mind.’

Stewart Geddes

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