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Bernard J Charnley

Frome
Bernard Charnley works primarily in oil paint with an emphasis on colour and materiality. The imagery engages with ideas of crisis, impermanence and change through a reinterpretation of the scenic tradition.
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Through sometimes tangled or abandoned girder like frames, barriers and geometric forms, this current series reinterprets the tradition of scenic portrayal, whether land or seascape. The aim is a visual sense of contemporary crises as an individual or collective moment. This conceptual underlay is activated through oil paint and recently the use of oil bars and canvas insertions, as part of a particular process of gesture and mark accumulation, scraping and scoring. The formal construction of each painting is then a play of tensions, complexity and resonances across this historic cultural relation to nature. Abstract and expressive traditions in painting are drawn upon and integral are the titles that accompany each painting. These are chosen by a combination of chance phrases and selected words to create a counterpoint of meaning and engagement.

 

Border Notes And Adorno’s Dream

451f

Poetry Notes

Energy Line Disturbs Water Spirits

Where Poetry Lives

Study

Fire On The Hill

Intermezzo

When The Stars Threw Down Their Spears

Not A Washing Line

Division 17

Reflection On A Clear Blue Day

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