the pleasure, passion,power and panache of painting

15
“Ken”
After taking a few photographs of the studio (with this article in my mind) we decided to carry our
conversation further... in the comfort of a rather lovely public house, not far from the studio. Here we
could sit and enjoy not only the beer, but also a warm and cordial atmosphere and discuss his artistic
ambitions further, especially the ambitions and ethos for the new gallery, which he had founded with
his good friend Anthony Cosgrove.
Richard told me about his surprise how ‘quick’ things have developed, from a commercial gallery
viewpoint, and how his Art became quickly established and snapped up by art collectors. An exhibition
at Castlegate House Gallery, Castlegate, Cockermouth, Cumbria, had been the catalyst for that interest
in his work, and his ‘street-cred’ as a gifted (serious) artist had multiplied four fold. It is perhaps
not that surprising, when one considers that his ‘style’ of work, one that shows definite nods in the
direction of Auerbach and Kossoff, in the main, has been, over the last few years, taken up by a
few artists both in the South and the North of the UK, some perhaps emulating that era of figurative
abstraction, especially by these two major abstract expressionist artists.
Kossoff and Auerbach had been highlighted by the influential art institutions, in recent times. Richard
however, may have been unaware of that fact, as his very real love of (and in particular) Kossoff, was
the leading ‘master’ for him, and had been for some time.