Graham Dean Solo Exhibition

Saturday 3rd July - Saturday 31st July

Open to the public on Saturday 3rd July with an informal reception all day

Returning to the New Ashgate Gallery with an innovative new exhibition of work,

Graham Dean is a contemporary painter of international renown.

 © Graham Dean 'Shoreline 2'

This exhibition will present Dean’s work in an innovative way, not perhaps a progression from his most recent solo Sleepers at Waterhouse & Dodd in 2009, but based loosely on the documentary ‘Falling between the Floorboards’, flimed over a year between 2008-2009 in various European locations as well as in the artist’s studio while he worked. The artist believes this type of exhibition to be unusual, and like nothing he has done previously.

The artist and Gallery Director will curate this exhibition collaboratively – hanging unframed works contextually with excerpts from the artist’s sketchbook.

Daily screenings of a documentary, ‘Falling between the Floorboards’, made about Dean in 2009 will complement the work, adding another dimension to the visitor’s experience.

© Graham Dean 'Highway 2'

Footprints

The gallery will exhibit 30 of Dean’s Footprints works. Footprints is a series of numbered, limited original unframed pieces. Dean has ceased work on this series, so the pieces are very collectible, and more affordable than other works in his repertoire. Buying work from the Footprints range offers a younger or less experienced collector the chance to enter into the market. For example, the average realised price of a Graham Dean work ranges from £1500 - £2500, and the pieces from the Footprints series are priced at approximately £500.

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© Graham Dean 'Footprints No. 309'

About Dean’s work

Graham Dean's paintings use the figure not in a literal way but more as a vehicle to convey ideas, emotions and psychological states. Whilst his works are representational, they escape the illustrative through his ability to draw a broader meaning from the deeply personal.

Employing a technique that he calls "reverse archaeology", Graham Dean transforms the conventional use of watercolour painting. Contrasting layers of paint are laid separately onto porous handmade Indian paper, achieving a density and brilliance of colour that is visceral in its effects, merging the figure with the organic process of paint spreading through paper. Sections from several different versions of the same composition are torn away and reassembled in a form of collage, lending each image a rawness and immediacy which supports the emotive and dramatic qualities of the works. He calls his figures 'holding pens' for emotion.

© Graham Dean 'Floating (Brighton)'

Biography

Graham Dean came to prominence in the seventies and the eighties when he was part of a group of artists in Britain who marked a return to figurative and realistic art, set in an urban context. The late eighties saw him radically change direction by ‘re-inventing’ watercolour, often on a large scale with sensual and psychological subject matter.

He is based in Brighton and in Umbria, Italy.

He is represented in London by Waterhouse & Dodd of Cork Street, whose repute in the Fine Art business extends far and wide.

Dean’s work is of investment quality; he is collected internationally by an astute following. 

www.grahamdean.com     

       

To view excerpts from videos about Graham Dean visit

http://www.grahamdean.com/mambo/video-part1.html