Mayday

Oil on poplar panel
60cm x 90cm

Born in Sunderland in 1962, Gavin Watson lives and works in rural Northumberland.

He has been represented in New York, by Cricket Hill Associates Gallery and in London by the Jonathan Cooper, Park Walk Gallery. His work has regularly been selected for the BP National Portrait award and the New Light Art competition and touring Exhibition. His work is in private collections in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Gavin Watson’s paintings ‘Tales from the Anthropocene’ contemplate his ecological, social and spiritual concerns for humankind, in a time when change is upon us.

They are responsive dialogues, which are interrelated and evolve into a collective narrative.

His imagined world is a playfully considered response to the fractured bonds contemporary societies have with the natural world, reflecting the thoughts of the environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht’s concept of ‘solastalgia’ or the lived experience of negative environmental change.

Viewed through the tarnished lens of a modern European romantic, Gavin’s interconnected world of memory and magic, myths and dreams, depict the familiar displaced.

His pictures present dislocated visions of beauty and belonging, while humans and other animals are presented as spiritually bonded, resonant beings. The spaces they occupy are rapidly changing and entering liminal states. There is a sense of animism and purpose present, as the unpredictable and powerful forces of nature interrupt the present stasis, offering agency to instability and the unknown.

Documentarist Jack Lowe says of Gavin’s work:

“Many don’t realise the imminency and severity of what’s bearing down on us. Artists are uniquely placed to empower their audiences by acting as an early warning system for our climatic and ecological predicament. Gavin is a beacon on this difficult journey, skilfully reminding us of the beauty slipping through our fingers and the resilience we must build if we are to salvage a liveable future alongside the world around us.”