Piers Ottey. Raindrops on Roses

About

A “polymath” is defined in Wikipedia as a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas

Piers Ottey was first described as this by Marc Steene in the forward to the catalogue for “Form and Process” our 2013 London exhibition. 

A Brough motorcycle, Battersea Power Station, the Sussex Downs.....These are a few of Piers Ottey’s favourite things. We see them here, alongside nudes, cardinals and others, painted in his signature style.

Drafting marks, in red or blue, chart the process of each painting and each colour used is detailed as it is painted in the margin. Diagonals reveal symmetries and other relationships, enhancing the compostion and adding interest to the finsihed work.

Piers Ottey is a true Renaissance Man, a polymath. 

His interest in vintage motorcycles, buildings and the landscape is not merely aesthetic, although this is important. 

He can take apart and rebuild a Brough, he has designed and built his studio and he spends time “en plein air” drawing & painting in situ.

Piers Ottey does not paint to order, or what he thinks might sell, he paints subjects he is passionate about and this imbues his work with a special quality that collectors respond to. 

His work has been exhibited in London, the provinces and abroad and can be found in private, corporate and public collections around the world.

Piers Ottey studied at Chelsea and now has studios in Sussex and London. Having studied under Uglow, Ottey's paintings have their starting point in the traditional school of landscape painting, but then he adds and takes away from the composition, uses diagonals to emphasise and draw the eye and leaves mistakes and drafting marks in the finished paintings. All of this, can be put down to mischief making, but it also sets his work  apart from his contemporaries and delights his collectors.