REIMAGINING COLOUR

EXHIBITION PARTNER

‘Reimagining Colour’ proudly partners with Harlequin, colour experts who strive to encourage interior design confidence through a vivacious palette. From their Loughborough studio, the Harlequin team used colour science to choose a selection of wall colours from the Sanderson paint range that expertly complement the artists and their works. Claire Vallis, creative director of Sanderson Design Group says:

“We were invited by the Maddox Gallery to introduce some joyous colour to the walls that house their incredible exhibition. Adding a new dimension to the artwork experience, we chose the perfect colour to enhance each piece, connecting with the psyche of the artist and continuing their story telling narrative.”

ABOUT SANDERSON

Sanderson Design Group PLC is a luxury interior furnishings company that designs, manufactures and markets wallpapers, fabrics and paints. In addition, the Company derives licensing income from the use of its designs on a wide range of products such as bed and bath collections, rugs, blinds and tableware. Sanderson Design Group’s brands include Zoffany, Sanderson, Morris & Co., Harlequin, Scion, and Clarke & Clarke. The Company has a strong UK manufacturing base comprising Anstey wallpaper factory in Loughborough and Standfast & Barracks a fabric printing factory, in Lancaster. Both sites manufacture for the Company and for other wallpaper and fabric brands. Sanderson Design Group employs approximately 600 people and its products are sold worldwide. It has showrooms in London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Amsterdam and Dubai. Sanderson Design Group trades on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SDG.

harlequin.sandersondesigngroup.com

Maddox Gallery is proud to present Reimagining Colour, a group exhibition that introduces new voices to the resounding chorus of historically important Abstract, Figurative and Colour Field artists. Transcending painterly traditions through a fusion of high art and popular culture, the works on show collectively question the representation, formalism and colour theory that were central to the Abstract Expressionists.

Much like many of the 20th century artists who are synonymous with this period, the bright, expressive, large-scale paintings on show are filled with emotion. A marriage between Abstract Expressionism and Post-Painterly Abstraction, the romantic and the robust, the painterly and the linear, together these contemporary fine artists present a vision of a post-war world, eclectically interpreted in their own distinct styles.

Boldly abstract in nature, British artist Nick Grindrod’s playful paintings experiment with colour, structure and form. His intuitive way of working in ‘real time’ means that his removal of paint and erasure of marks are just as important as the application of paint, resulting in art that hums and vibrates with an exciting energy.

Presenting vivid assemblages of intense colour, sharp contrasts and scrawlings of cryptic language, Berlin-based David Pher’s paintings are an interplay of intention and craftsmanship

with spontaneity and chance. With his abstract works, he transports the viewer into a dreamland through subtle interactions between bright, evocative hues and darker elements.

Influenced by the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Colombian-born Dairo Vargas’s fluid brush strokes invite the viewer to reflect on personal memory and encourage introspection. Referencing the Old Masters, his abstract paintings capture the process of thought by using gestural free association to access subconscious memories and emotions and convey different psychological states.

Melissa Herrington’s large-scale abstract paintings, meanwhile, explore the concept and complexity of transformation. Through a charming mix of Colour Field and Abstract Expressionist painting techniques, she invites viewers into her world of saturated colours and soft pastel shades, where loosely sketched forms are overlaid with irregular marks that appear to have been left unintentionally.

Evoking a meditative response from the viewer, the Reimagining Colour exhibition encourages us to look within ourselves. By exploring our thoughts and feelings – which, like abstraction, do not have a physical or concrete form – we gain a better understanding of the artists’ intentions, and see what they feel: sadness, joy, ecstasy and melancholy.

British b. 1974

Layering geometric forms with gestural painting techniques, Grindrod’s works are boldly abstract in style. His intuitive way of working, instinctive and immediate, is punctuated by intense bursts of activity, with aesthetic decisions to apply or erase paint made in the moment. Consequently, the removal of marks plays just as important a role in Grindrod’s art, which is immediately clear when you admire his work. Painstakingly building up and removing layers of paint, Grindrod contrasts graphic colour fields with worn, distressed surfaces and gestural marks with sharp, measured lines. Despite the contradictory nature of his work, the artist’s skill at balancing a composition

and palette means that each painting has a joyful, uplifting energy that positively hums. His art is undoubtedly playful, but beneath the surface, there is a rigorous commitment to how it is crafted. Deeply important to Grindrod, his bold choice of colours is intended to create an emotional connection with the viewer. “I think this is the most important part of my practice,” he says. “It’s the magical element of creating my work.” A British artist based in Sheffield, Grindrod studied Fine Art at the University of Derby and Sheffield College. He has shown widely in Britain and his work is included in numerous private collections.

Acrylics on Canvas

120 x 150 cm

RORSCHACH, 2022

HOT YOGA, 2023

Acrylics on Canvas 120 x 120 cm

WHEN

SHE’S ON TOP, 2022

Acrylics on Canvas 120 x 100 cm

WHEN SHE’S ON TOP, 2022

808, 2022

Acrylics on 18mm Birchwood Ply 60 x 50 cm

UNDERCURRENT, 2022

Acrylics on 18mm Birchwood Ply

60 x 50 cm

Germany b. 1982

David Pher is an abstract painter based in Berlin, Germany. Growing up in a house full of arts in the 1980s in middle Germany he fell early in love with intense colors and abstract compositions. His eclectic pieces present vivid assemblages of intense color, sharp contrasts, and daring compositions while sometimes opening windows into dream worlds where preternatural beings lay in wait for a beholder to interpret their mysteries. Emerging from an interplay of intention and craftsmanship with

spontaneity and chance, his artworks often feature scrawlings of cryptic language and integrate subtle interactions between darker elements and an arresting levity of evocative colors. The goal of David’s art is to transform rooms around the world into colorful and happy places taking the art viewers into Dreamlands where they can meet their demons and angels going hand in hand to the very end which the viewer defines.

PAKARD, 2022

Acrylic, Coal & Oil Pastel on Canvas 160 x 160 cm

Acrylic, Coal & Oil Pastel on Canvas 150 x 150 cm

DO DREAM, 2022

Acrylic, Coal & Oil Pastel on Canvas 150 x 150 cm

STATE OF MIND, 2022

Acrylic, Coal & Oil Pastel on Canvas 130 x 130 cm

KEEP ON BELIEVING, 2022

Acrylic, Coal & Oil Pastel on Canvas 130 x 150 cm

Colombian b. 1978

Colombian by birth, Dairo Vargas is a contemporary fine artist who draws influence from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to cast a connection with our behaviour in modern society. His abstract work references the old masters while simultaneously conveying differing psychological states.

Vargas is interested in the representation of external responses from internal experience and vice versa. Each image gives access to

subconscious memories and emotions. The paintings appear to be either in stillness or movement and the fluid brush strokes invite the viewer to reflect on personal memory and encourage introspection.

The work aims to capture the thinking process. Vargas uses gestural free association to represent the mind at the point it connects to a higher energy, releasing unlimited thoughts and emotions.

HOLDING COURT, 2022

Mixed Media on Canvas

135 x 165 cm

Mixed Media on Canvas

91 x 81 cm

Melissa Herrington is a contemporary abstract artist currently living and working in Los Angeles, California. She has called Southern California home since 2005 where she received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Prior to that, she spent most of her early career in Atlanta, Georgia and has a BFA from Florida State University. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Herrington creates large-scale, abstract paintings that are built up through layers of paint on canvas overlaid with mark-making using

graphite, charcoal and pigments. Herrington’s newest works explore the complexities of transformation. Each work functions as both an individual entity and as a part of a larger theme of process. Herrington explores spontaneous marks and subtle forms through abstraction. Layers are fundamental to her imagery and process, infusing each work with multiple surfaces. Colours and unsteady shapes blend on the surface where irregular marks appear as though left unintentionally by a trace. Loosely sketched forms blend into whites and grays, contrasted by whole abstracted fields.

FIRE LOTUS, 2022

Mixed Media on Canvas 122 x 122 cm each

FIRE LOTUS, 2022

CAULDRON VEIL, 2022

Mixed Media on Canvas 183 x 137 cm

CRESCENT SHADOWS, SCOOPED MOONS UPON THE GROUND, 2022

CRESCENT SHADOWS, SCOOPED MOONS UPON THE GROUND, 2022