New Work

John Oxborough’s latest paintings examine and challenge the conventions of portrait painting in the artist's characteristic Expressionist style. With brilliant colour underpinning the series, Oxborough’s exhibition is a confection with vivid blue and yellow to luminous copper and sienna.

Fragmented figures are the centrepiece of each painting, with plains of colour, sinuous line, distinctive objects, and abstract forms uniting on the surface. Throughout the works Oxborough waivers between figuration and abstraction, as the artist explores the full range of possibilities for formal deconstruction and reinterpretation.

“Recollected snippets of a place or experience are built up, layer upon layer, in a rhythmic pattern that creates a canvas in the Modernist manner. In this way, compositions are developed out of blocks and swathes of colour that reference the surface of the canvas and always remind us of the creative process. Colour and line give expression to the artist’s thoughts and emotions, but it is a two way process. It is the memories and experiences of the artist that provide the raw material for him to explore the potential of colour and line.

"Oxborough gives himself permission to make things up. Fragments of figures intermingle with more abstract experiences; memories of well-travelled places merge with landmarks of more recent journeys. Objects, shapes and forms coalesce in patterns of colour that deny chronological time. Through strong use of colour, certain objects become a point of focus within a painting, commenting on the process of perception and recollection ... line interacts with colour which is employed in broad, sweeping planes as well as being thickly applied in compact blocks. Oxborough is a fine colourist, modulating his tones and interspersing patches of bold colour to build structure into his compositions. Above all, colour is the means by which objects become the focus of a work and convey the distinct clarity of special moments.” – Robin Woodward, 2013