LOCAL film-maker Clive Walley revisits his love of painting in a new exhibition at Frome’s Black Swan Arts.
The works in his ‘Birches in Mist’ look at the relationship between reality, perception and what we are allowed to see. They show focus on trees, but these are obscured by layers of ‘mist’.
Clive describes the evocative series of paintings as ‘pictures to peer into’ because they take a little time to see properly.
He said, “We don’t just see the world the way we think we do. It comes about from a collaboration between what may be actually out there and what we think we know is out there.”
The paintings are made up of many layers of paint, using a technical process that has been influenced by Clive’s background in TV film-making and animation.
He is interested in exploring the philosophy that was very dominant in the 20th century that paintings should be flat and should not entertain illusions of depth. In his new works, the flatness theory works against the older pictorial one within the same painting creating a compelling complexity.
The combed sweeps of paint provide the flatness and the trees provide the pictorial illusion, although he confides that he ‘didn’t find it easy to do’.
Clive Walley’s work as an artist has included painting, installations, animation and film-making, and his award-winning art-films have been shown by Channel 4 and the BBC, among others. He is now based in Frome and is concentrating on painting and art movies.
The show runs until the 4th February. For more information visit www.blackswan.org.uk
