Bill Redshaw United Kingdom
Bill Redshaw was born and grew up in the North London Borough of Barnet. He started to make work as a child; ‘painting’ the garden fence with water, and drawing monsters. Much later, he studied an Art Foundation at Camberwell at 18, and moving to Brighton where he completed a BA in Painting. He now lives and works in Brighton, from his studio in Hove, and anywhere he takes himself.
Bill Redshaw’s artworks are like diary entries. To different degrees of abstraction, evolving often towards minimalism, paintings and assemblages describe Flora and Fauna. People, places and objects. Inspired by loving shapes, forms and features of all different varieties and sources; tide marks in sand or scars on fruit skin become elements in shading and print techniques. Pictures torn from books for their figuration, such as museum artefacts, are appropriated as characters to fill a new world. Physical trinkets one collects and assigns precious value to, are celebrated. Their interesting colours and textures are transformed through playful experimentation, highlighting a thing’s history of creative use, and uselessness. Items, materials and liquids from their bedroom, studio, or travelling, find their way into an artwork alongside more traditional media like oils and pastels. They may separate from one another, muddy together, or crust, and these details can mimic aspects of Nature on a miniature scale, and create their own imaginary landscapes. Textural surfaces are reimagined in this way through basic craft techniques from school or children’s television – like tie-dye, batik resist, butterfly printing, and rubbings. Turning from paintings to sculptures, he experiments in making, breaking and mending, until an image feels ‘settled’, and later labours to refine, or ‘prune’ their structure of patterns that emerge and reveal ‘dot-to-dot’ figurations.
Artwork
Year of The Dragon_01_Slug, charcoal on paper, 2024
Ghost Rider, oil paint and oil pastels on glass, 2023, £1700
Up and Over, oil, machine stitching, dyed sticks, marker pen, ink, on canvas and board, 2023
BadBoy, ink, charcoal, chalk marker, pen, red ink stamp on newsprint, 2024, £300
Boiling Thought | Living Flame, acrylic and Indian ink on mixed fabric collage, with thread and string, 2022
Palm Tree, Indian ink, oil, powder paint, on mixed silk collage, with thread and wood, 2022, £2600
Evening After Work, water soluble oil monotype print, fabric collage, watercolour, oil, matches and found material, card, 2022, £1560
Royal Kimono (Seated Gogo), wood, 2024, £400
Mum and Dad Telly Watching, acrylics, oils, fabric collage, coffee, wax, newsprint, on canvas, 2020-2021, £2850