The "Room" series began life as a simple attempt to transfer figurative line drawings from sketchbooks onto large-canvas format. The drawings looked a little naked, so I experimented by adding colour and working in a three-dimensional interior space for my characters to inhabit. I soon became intrigued by the possibilities of angles and cornered spaces. I'd sketch my bedroom, other rooms in my house, source hotel rooms from the 1950s and 1970s for geometric composition and interior design. I'd work with a loose drawing, scan it, sometimes find a figurative sketch to insert in this new space, then play around with colours in image software before settling on a worked solution. Soon, a combination of flat colour blocking, studied colour matching, loose black lines and a certain pink quadrilateral became the visual motifs for this body of work, the culmination of project research and 35 years' inspiration by Matisse via Richard Diebenkorn, Patrick Caulfield, Milton Avery and (the clincher) Hergé.
The paintings are deliberately large (okay, mid-scale if hung in a gallery space). They certainly share, in a desire to scale up what could be individual panels within comic book format, something of Lichtenstein's approach to his dot paintings. And any implied narrative is offset by the visual abstractions of colour, line and shape. The viewer is therefore invited to read these paintings as much for visual form as for narrative subtext.
About the Artist
Tim Gilpin is a Northern Irish artist resident in Hertfordshire, England.
Artists who inspire him include Henri Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn, Patrick Caulfield, Herge, Michael Craig-Martin, Milton Avery, Quentin Blake and Ralph Steadman.
Tim has exhibited in galleries in London, Strasbourg and his native Northern Ireland since 2000, as well as online.
Recent Exhibitions:
Oct-Nov 2013: Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France
