© 2008 Lydon Fine Art

Made by Sea Fox Design

Personal Statement

 

 

Just before my Bachelors degree show I remember being on the phone to my mother outside my studio telling her that I had no choice but to truly become what I knew myself to be.

 

Throughout my teenage years art and music were always at the forefront of my life. I was privately educated and my parents worked very hard so that I could have a good quality education. But, like most sheltered academic institutions it came with its drawbacks. Looking back it is interesting to see how we get pulled, pushed, inspired and driven to fulfill our creative dreams, and how certain genres and techniques of tutoring can either thwart our passions or blast them beautifully into fruition.

 

Having done my BTEC Foundation at the Park Art School of Yeovil College, I approached the idea of university with a better all round insight to many different genres of art. Yeovil was very different to my previous schooling, and the freedom to experiment was much more vast.

 

I became fascinated with surface texture and organic elements that could be integrated into mediums such as textiles and sculpture. I also became deeply interested in life form and was able to do substantial amounts of life drawing +, focusing on perspective and the tones found in the human skin.

 

Admittedly, I hit a wall when I applied to university because I was so fascinated by so many different aspects of art that it was very difficult to find just one or two to focus on and then to give myself the realization that whatever I chose to study would need to become a way of life for me and earn me money in the real world.

 

I found the classical masters as equally inspiring as our contemporaries. This fact has never changed save for the fact that I now hold a certain elitist regard for the sacred aura found in the work of the old masters because our world is so much faster and instantaneous than it used to be and the skill used centuries ago is not as commonplace now with all our technological advancements.

 

My realizations stemmed from the age old profundity of history itself.  Every art movement that has passed through history sows the seeds for the next one and thus those that begin a new era are inspired by those that came before and the new ground they set out.

 

My longstanding admirations and personal addictions lay primarily with the Pre Raphaelites. Their quest for truth and beauty portraying the female figure in the natural environment contained an energy like nothing I had ever previously encountered. Their attention to detail and painstaking effort put into their paintings and sculptures to evoke the breathtaking tenderness and true aura of the feminine caught my soul and seemed to strike an unbelievable affinity with my fascination for the concepts of desire and memory that I am so driven to portray.

 

Arriving at university I chose to study fashion in order to produce garments that would be ultimate creations with which to decorate the human form. I was able to specialize in theatre costume and embroidery which seemed perfect at the time. However, the mainstay of the other elements of the course were not for me, pattern cutting and marketing alluded and confused me and I had to think quickly. For the first time in my life I had to change an academic decision. I realized that my fascination with the human form was not to create that which clothed it, but to portray the aura and energy that came from within it. I restarted choosing a Bachelors in Fine Art Painting and never looked back.

 

Once on the painting course I found I was really able to come into my own. I explored concepts both practical and theoretical that helped my ideas evolve into the physicalities I wished them to undertake. I became engrossed with concepts linked to ideas of the macrocosm and microcosm, the concept of pure energy within free flowing colour, and the arena that was large scale abstract. Both my historical and practitional tutors were utterly inspiring. I was able to learn so much about the old and the new, allowing my practical and theoretical work to align harmoniously. Music came back and I found myself integrating it into pieces and using rhythms from it to apply paint with.

 

Towards the latter part of my degree I discovered the uses of technology and started using the facilities of a computer along with video and photography to assist me in layering my work which pushed my concepts involving memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having finished my degree I went on to study a Masters in Sculpture. This course was theoretical and I felt it healthy and varied to continue my studies in a different medium. I submerged myself in the theories of Roland Barthes and the writings of Walter Benjamin amongst many others. I got the chance to really get to grips with the world of sculptors from Brancusi to Gilbert and beyond. I explored semiotics, abjection and other analytical linguistic topics. My final written work was an exploration of the truth and beauty to be found in the ever changing definition of the angel, which led into serious debates of the affectations that consumerism and commercialism have had on that particular subject, and indeed on art history itself.

 

I graduated in 2001 and moved back to my home county. After having worked many different jobs for several years, I found myself at a framers and mirror makers establishment. I developed skills in glazing and gilding.

 

At around the same time, I decided to really try and bring my art back to the forefront where I knew it should be and opened Lydon Fine Art. I traveled around doing art fairs in order to allow the general public to view my work outside of an artistically orientated establishment. I was able to undertake private commissions in varying mediums, and found that the combination of the business and my day job to be very complimentary. I started using gilding techniques in my painting, and my knowledge of framing and presentation pushed my practical work onwards.

 

My studio was completed in August last year, allowing me to finally have a large scale space within which to continue my ever increasingly sized personal works and commissions alike, along with being able to work together with other artists; an environment I’d so sorely missed since my Bachelors, and am so very glad to have back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“THE IMAGINATION IS EVIDENCE OF THE DIVINE”