Richard Heley - Gratitude XXL

Richard Heley
English
75
I qualified in 1973 as a specialist Art & craft teacher in Australia but never wanted to teach. So I dropped out to draw, paint, write poetry, songs & stories. I have exhibited many times, mainly in London and Derby (where I ran and curated my own gallery). In 1997 I won the Farago UK Poetry Slam Championship which has led to 5 performance tours of USA. I regularly perform my own poetry, stories and songs and host local and international poetry festivals.
My main practice is studio painting and I am currently painting a series of graphic fantasy portraits of people living around the Maida Hill area of Central London. I also paint live as performance and notable paintings have come from Nightclubs such as Megatripolis and Subterranea in London. “Live” painting multiple 6x4ft boards in a few hours requires total abandonment and applying the paint almost by instinct, this practice has surely influenced my studio paintings which often results in varying degrees of texture and the joyous, spontaneous laying of colour inherited from the live painting. I have a delight in Buddhism, Bible, Law of attraction and the illusion of existence leading to surreal figurative and landscape fusion where hills become elephants and faces replace the riverbanks. I bring the colours of Australia where I spent my teenage and college years, the wild psychedelia of the 60’s and 70’s, the delight in painting interactively with children, the spiritual expansion of an internationally performing poetry slam champion, the sheer energy of painting “live” in nightclubs at 142 beats a minute and a lifetime’s practice of letting it all fall out of me onto canvas or paper. I hope that my paintings confirm that the path of least resistance to manifesting your desires is happiness.
Artist Richard Heley
Title "Gratitude"
Year 2024
Medium Acrylic on canvas
Size XXL (122 x 122 cm)
Signed with Monogram on front, full signature on back
Direct from the artist
Certificate of authenticity included
Straight from the artists studio
Will arrive rolled in tube, unstretched, unframed