“I think starting with painting itself is quite fundamental. It is something we do as a child almost instinctively, and it’s something that relates us as a species to our earliest ancestors. I think it’s fair to say that there’s something inherently human about the act of painting.”
Lee Hardman
Having initially trained as a pharmacist and then worked in the community providing healthcare, Lee Hardman is very much focused on the human experience. His work explores our commonality and seeks to capture something that is relatable and recognisable, something that stirs a deeper understanding.
Pathos
Lee Hardman
30 April - 4 June
Opening 29 April 7:30pm
Lee Hardman
Included in this exhibition is a series of paintings on red ground, along with others that explore our humanity and something of the human experience.
Red Ground Paintings
As an artist I try to always use what I know, to paint from experience, and here I was thinking about my influences. I was thinking about other artists that have been influential in my own development as a painter. I was thinking too about our nature and how important it is to accept that nothing is really new. I mean, many artists talk about their influences and I think it’s very much a part of who we are as human beings. To understand and reuse, to reinterpret, these things are fundamental to our individual progress and development.
Before I started this series I wanted to consider the mother, the idea of the mother figure. I wanted to reach for the origin of things in a sense. Then at some point these two things came together and I settled on depictions, portraits or imagined portraits of the mothers of those artists who’s work has been influential to me. It seemed somehow relevant that I had never met them; that my only references would be found photographs or painted portraits of them: borrowed, recycled or reused imagery.
Making Faces
The Making Faces series began in lockdown and during the Covid pandemic as a reaction to the surreal and anxious state of being at that time. For me I think there is something of course childish about the act of making faces, but there is also something confrontational too, something defiant, something instinctive and curious.