ArtEImage - Life

Life Work by Richard Young

The work shown here was undertaken at the Filton Art School in Bristol in a studio underneath the Royal West of England Art Academy. This was the original site of the Bristol Art School until it moved some years ago to more modern premises. The lighting is really good and my fellow artists inspired me to follow different styles. I am particularly indebted to Martin Lovell and Roger Conlon who have both helped my development. The work shown here is in watercolour/Gouache media or Conte on Arches or Ingres paper.

The images echo the static state of the models while the use of the paint or pencil is really the interest for me, the images always have some elements of colour in them. In my work I am continually trying to abbreviate the image and allow the mind to fill in the blanks.

The Lying State
£250 Unframed
2000 29x38cm Arches 300lb Watercolour, gouache & pencil

Models liked to gravitate to the long pose that was normally held for around 90 minutes. Normally they fell asleep. Old cloth was used as backdrops with pretty nasty colours, I guess this is how the colour scheme developed. I am likely to have the work by Andrew Wyeth in my mind when I was painting this image.

Seated back view
Sold
1995 29x38cm Whatman 300lb watercolour

Liz at Bristol Fine Art found some old Whatman watercolour paper, it has a lovely soft feel and can soak up water like no other paper that I have used. The paper has a rich creamy colour and inspired me. This painting was one of four paintings done on the same evening out of the same sheet of paper. I love the hard edges that the watercolour paint makes at the edges.

Seated Roman Style
Unframed £200
2001 Conte Ingres paper

This is a Conte drawing on tinted Ingres paper. The model was very athletic with a very sinuous body with hard muscles.

Here, I am interested in the paintings that show colour accents somewhat in a style developed from Coldstream, Sutherland and Uglow who all use marks for some device or other. The Conte colours really shout at you and brings visual interest, I try to used them as guideposts for the eye as they wander around the image.