Artist Q&A with Josh Rowell

Josh Rowell generates his artistic vision by focusing on technological advances that shape our contemporary lives, communicating our increasingly mediated human interactions within the confines of visual art. The artist balances analogue techniques with the instantaneous nature of the digital age. This juxtaposition produces a language that explores and reshapes information, and celebrates the hand-made in a time that is increasingly being enveloped by the virtual.

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

This is sort of an impossible question to answer! It’s hard to choose just one because I have admired, followed and idolised so many artists; all for different reasons, at different stages of my life. But if I had to give you my favourite artist right now, I think I would say Leonardo DaVinci, his work has been at the forefront of my mind ever since seeing some of his paintings on display at the Uffizi gallery in Florence last summer. I think it is the combination of creativity, skill, mathematics, science and so on that makes him such an important artist, perhaps the most important artist to have ever lived.

How did you become a professional artist?

I grew up in a fairly creative family, I remember as a child my grandmother would teach me to paint and draw at the weekends. That, combined with some inspirational art teachers at school, I felt inspired to follow a Fine Arts education to Degree and Master’s Degree level. Upon graduating from university, I actually took up a position as a gallery assistant for a contemporary art gallery in Mayfair, London. I always say that this was perhaps the most valuable experience of my career so far, … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Gareth Edwards

Gareth Edwards is a contemporary landscape painter. He is a graduate of Goldsmiths College, an elected RWA Academician, and is a long time resident of St Ives’ historic Porthmeor Studios, previously occupied by luminaries of British painting such as Patrick Heron and Ben Nicholson.He is a sessional tutor at the Newlyn School of Art and a prominent member of the Newlyn Society of Artists.

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Cy Twombly and JWM Turner have both been hugely influential to my work, from decades ago to the present day. They are the lode stones of my practice and will continue to be so for the immediate future. I try to get to as many shows of their work as possible, to accompany my large but still growing book collection on both artists. 

How did you become a professional artist?

On the day I graduated from my Art History degree, I set up an easel in my rented bedsit and bought the materials to start painting. I have never stopped painting. Fourteen years later the Hart Gallery, London, put my work into the London Art Fair and a really well-known fashion designer bought two pieces. I went on to have ten one-person shows with Hart Gallery over the next fourteen years, until the owners retired.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

They are inspired by ‘Emotional Weather’ – the paintings are poetical and mysteriously evanescent. They are abstracted landscapes with a cool and subtle palette built to seduce the viewer into a half-remembered space of subtlety engineered light, the light of hope. Each painting is a poem in paint, a poem of light, space, landscape and mystery. My studio … Click here to read more

Artist Q&A with Melanie Comber

Why did you become an artist?

Making things and painting became a way for me to express myself from a very young age. I hated school and found it really difficult to follow the group. In art class, I discovered that I could express myself through a process of ‘making’.  I could have a world that I created; a space that was solely mine to dictate. From there I just knew that this was the way that I wanted to face the world, and focused my education towards art school. It was a search for my own voice, my own language, and a way to project myself in the world that stood outside everyone else.

How is your work different than everything else out there?

I make paintings using traditional materials, but I don’t apply those materials in a traditional way. I use oil paint and loose pigments to create large three dimensional surfaces which have a very illusory appearance. They play between painting, sculpture, and photography. On first glance the viewer is never quite sure what exactly they are looking at.  The most common question that I get asked about my work is, “how is it made?” I want the viewer to move around the work and I have been known to make work that changes colour from different directions. I want the viewer to work at having an experience with my painting, and want it to surprise you.

What’s different about your current body of work?

I spent the COVID-19 lockdown unable to access my studio space so I had to find a way to adapt my process.  I began painting … Click here to read more