IN THE STUDIO
Nevertheless, the initial idea for
Strawberry Skies and the other works
in that series came from looking at
Italian Renaissance paintings filled
with happy, joyous cherubs floating
in the sky. “I liked the idea of taking
that and shaking it up, like physically
shaking one of the paintings and
seeing everything falling down to
a bit of a darker place.”
Unsurprisingly for a drummer,
rhythm is important to Chris’s art.
He listens to music in the studio,
everything from metal and electro to
Hans Zimmer soundtracks, while even
his most complex compositions have
an instinctive sense of balance.
He likes all paintings in a series to be
uniform too, each one the same size
and colour palette. “I’m quite OCD
with that sort of thing,” he chuckles.ABOVE Moving to
Falcon Mill allowed
Chris to work on a
much bigger scale
RIGHT A Moment in
Time and Space,
oil on canvas,
190x170cm
TOP RIGHT A detail
from Last of My
Kind, showing the
cherubs in his work
Mill, a six-storey former cotton mill on
the outskirts of Bolton, Lancashire.
While the mill is home to many local
businesses, one floor is reserved
for a dozen artists’ studios.
“It was a game changer for me
when I moved in to here,” he explains.
“Before this, me and my wife were
living in a small apartment so I was
painting in there. It really restricted
what size of work I could do, oil
painting being messy. When I got
here it really elevated my work.”
Artists & Illustrators first became
aware of Chris’s work at the London
Art Fair in January, when one of his
paintings, Strawberry Skies, was
causing something of a bottleneck.
We stood and watched for a while as
one visitor after another spotted from
afar the seemingly abstract burst of
blush pinks and silky turquoise blues,
only to step closer and see more
clearly the tiny cherubs apparently
floating in space. It is a clever,
confident and beautiful painting that
could have been sold several dozen
times over had it not already earned
a coveted red dot.
“At the end of the day, people look
at paintings with their eyes and that’s
the initial impact that you want to
capture – you like what you see,” he
explains. “It’s not essential for people
to know the story behind a painting.
It’s also nice for them to make their
own interpretation of what they see.
You don’t want to give too much away.”