Recent Works by Chris Macauley

Chris Macauley

"My art education started in Blackpool School of Art where I first saw the work of the artists who are sometimes referred to as the 'Euston Road School.' Their emphasis on the every day experience expressed through sometimes strict, observational drawing has had a long lasting influence on my approach to painting. This did not stop me admiring and being influenced by other more abstract and semi-figurative artists that held sway in Britain at the time. On continuing my art education in Newcastle Upon Tyne, I had the opportunity to meet some of these important and influential artists, such as Sir William Brooker and Albert Irvin. I often visited the London studios of some of my favourite abstract artists of the time. I am still trying to reconcile two very different approaches to painting, ie; figurative and abstract, and believe there is no right or wrong way; just endless possibilities.

I first exhibited in London in the 1980s at the Royal Overseas League annual exhibition with work that was completely abstract. After a long gap in painting I started teaching art in Leicestershire and returned to the figure and life drawing, going back to observation, culminating in a large one-man show at the Attenborough Centre, Leicester University."

Chris Macauley

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"The art of composition is defined as the arrangement of the elements at the painter’s disposal on the canvas: Chris Macauley’s decision to base his work of the last few years on the traditional subject matter of the painter – still life, portrait, landscape and seascape – brings to our attention his unique sensitivity to tone and colour. The harbour scenes from favourite places in Devon and Cornwall may be familiar to admirers of English painting, but these subjects offer Chris the opportunity to explore an abstracted language of composition and exquisite harmonies of limpid colours with a rare individuality. To look at this work invites us to wonder whether these scenes are really as familiar to us as we thought, as we engage with the subtle balances and pellucid tonalities.

Chris Macauley holds all of these elements together on the surface of his pictures in a delicate state of tension, as though the slightest movement of a line or shape, or the smallest adjustment of a tone or hue would destroy the equilibrium that is the object of the work. Chris’s exploration of the dynamic play between the observed world and the flat surface of the canvas began in his student days under the tutelage of Sir William Brooker. It evokes a tradition which includes some of the most authoritative names in painting of the modern era; Uglow, Coldstream and Andrews come to mind, as of course does Cézanne. The French master’s axiom ‘Painting is a harmony parallel to nature’ contains an enduring truth; we can see it for ourselves in Chris Macauley’s recent work."

Stephen Cranham