b. Leeds, 1986.

 

Joe Bucklow is an artist living and working in North Yorkshire.

 

From a mixture of imagination and my photographs I paint landscapes and urban scenes with a strong cinematic and theatrical influence.

 

These semi-imagined settings are transmitted to the viewer through painting to offer a glimpse into worlds that are at once familiar and unknown. The Scenes evoke a faded recollection, but also the unease and dynamism of the unexplored, providing enough visual information for an acquisition of bearings but opportunity for uncertainty and questioning.

 

My technique uses both an illustrative use of line and detail along with expressive and gestural brushwork layered to construct these spaces, often imbued with the suggestion of narrative or allegory. It is in this environment that the mind can dwell and hear itself echo. The paintings attempt to present an environment for intensely private moments often experienced within a vast space.

 

My work attempts to encourage the viewer to dwell upon the forgotten and mundane elements of our surroundings whilst elevating the sense of solitude and the peace found in seclusion. The images tend to be brooding, half-seen poetic visions that blur the lines between nostalgia and history, theatre and reality.

 

Courtesy of the artist’s website.