MEET| ARTISTS
ANDY OWEN-SMITH & ANDY BRADLEY
For October, thinking on the idea of friendship and collaboration, we're highlighting two artists from the collective, friends, who share both a name and a little history.
Andy Owen-Smith (yes, co-owner and one half of father and son team at Sixteen Gallery/ Online) and Andy Bradley met during their BA in Fine Art at The University of Gloucestershire and came back together to make a show 45 years after their graduation (2023, Forty-five Years On... , Sixteen Gallery).
Both are currently working in oil but beside that, their styles have little in common. And yet their work can be both complementary and conversational when brought together, both seemingly capturing moments of contemporary life but expressing them through their own unique perspectives, creating new spaces for viewers to inhabit.
Andy's work focuses on capturing slices of everyday life. Using his expressive brush work to create a depth of mood and light as he deftly constructs intense atmosphere and tension in a scene, whether figurative or landscape. Making intuitive often spontaneous marks Andy works using bold colours and compositions conveying narratives and stories throughout his pieces, grounding them in locations real or imagined. Often painting on board over canvas, he allows the grain of the surface to bring an organic nature to his work, rendering a sense of delicacy and sensitivity to his portraits especially. Imbued with life and light, Andy's paintings have a timeless quality, made to spend time with to fully explore the textures and layers at work.
Andy is in Sixteen Gallery for a show from the 17th October, you can catch him and his latest works there. And if you want to know more about the Gallery and how it all began check out the story here.
Andy makes paintings conveying energetic and intuitive responses to subject matters ranging from still life to landscapes. His bold dynamic use of colour and shape help him to explore a duality between his reference and an abstracted form as he reframes what he sees around him in his own expressive voice. Using acrylics on canvas or board, his works create almost their own world, recognisable but curious in their abstraction from reality.
Simplified forms and shapes create playful positive images, interrupted with deeply detailed textural passages which lead the eye pleasingly as the viewer explores the work. The world created places the viewer in almost an alternate reality, one which is bright and good, a place to explore a feeling or a moment neither totally safe or absurd; a place to spend time in.
To explore ALL the Sixteen Online Artists click here
To join the community yourself, click here
Kommentare