Tom Scase – New Horizons

About

Tom Scase’s recent works are vibrant and zestful and mark a welcome start to Highgate Gallery’s new year of shows, following the lockdowns and postponed shows of 2020.

Despite their joyful presentation, a darkly sinister undertone lingers beneath the playful surface marks in these paintings, creating strange landscapes where cloned sheep, menacing bees and warplanes are juxtaposed with abstract forms.  Materials used include paints, collage, ink, varnishes and natural substances such as tree bark and mud from Hampstead Heath.

Horizons, which are a preoccupation in many of the works, become a metaphor for ambition, for the future, for what lies beyond, the limitless limit…and when we look at them further, our perception of space – as well as our relationship with nature – is called into question.  Even Scase’s humour has an edge of danger, and we are constantly challenged about what reality it is we are facing.

Tom Scase is a Suffolk-born artist who has lived in Highgate for many years.  He won first prize with the New Contemporaries and Europa Prize, Belgium, and has exhibited widely including at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, Sandnes, Norway (with Derek Jarman), Southampton University, and at South Hill Park Arts Centre (Arts Council), the Cello Factory, the ICA and the RCA in London.  He is a member of the London Group, originally founded in 1913 by 32 artists including David Bomberg and Jacob Epstein.