3: New Contemporary Painters

About

Signal Gallery are delighted to introduce 3: young local artists - James Harrison, Darrell Hawkins and Ben Taylor. These 3: are linked together not only by a history of studying together, but as well as sharing a special creative quality and energy. James Harrison was born in 1984 and attended the University of Brighton (BA Fine Art Painting 1st Class 2007) and is currently studying at the Princes Drawing Trust. He is moving onto to the Royal College of Art in September to do an MA Painting. James' work is a projection of what he observes and feels about the world. Current influences range from Goya's etchings to James Ensor and Philip Guston. His source material stems from drawings he makes from the surroundings and the people he encounters. He uses these drawings to fuel his paintings, populating his imaginative worlds with characters and places. The end result is an alluring view of the world that is both strange and personal. Darrell Hawkins was born in 1986 and has also studied at University of Brighton (BA Fine Art 1st Class 2007). He has taken part in a number of exhibitions in Brighton and Kent. Darrell's paintings have a freshness and spontaneity unrestrained by formal practices. They appear to be an exchange of ideas and images that have a fleeting importance to the artist, but which gain lingering resonance in the context of the paintings. The selection of these images is intuitive and propels the creative process. The finished paintings seem to be a subjective record of ‘noughties' sub-culture. You sense that underneath the busy and buzzy exteriors, a disturbing private narrative exists. Ben Taylor graduated from the University of Brighton in 2006. Since graduating Ben has taken part and curated a number of exhibitions in East London. He was selected to be part of the Drawing Show at the Royal Academy in 2007 and was featured in a Channel 4/ Saatchi documentary about young artists. Though considered as a painter, Ben Taylor does not express himself through the medium of paint. Instead he uses an ever-expanding vocabulary to create new ways of making images. Within these beguiling images we are confronted by a disorientating realism that intoxicates the senses, transporting us into a world that exists between our conscious and unconscious mind.