I was born and raised in the heavily industrialised Black Country and did not consciously choose to become an artist. But at some point in my life the urge to create was so great that I had little choice in the matter.
Four years labouring in a metal pressing factory after leaving school was a formative influence, and went a long way in forming my vision. I used little colour during these years as my world view didn’t seem big enough to find colour and beauty among the smoking chimney stacks. Joy in nature evaded me. Charcoal became my medium of choice, seeming to be at one with my subject matter, and large-scale woodcuts forced my often unclear ideas into shape. Most of my work from this area is very autobiographical with a strong sense of narrative, exploring themes such as oppression, exploitation and captivity.
Twenty years ago I discovered Shetland, the most northerly part of Britain, and immediately became entranced by the ever-changing light over the wild landscape and ocean; so against all logic I loaded my etching press in my car and headed north.
The first Shetland work I produced explored themes such as freedom, growth and rebirth. However, I started to become increasingly dissatisfied because I felt that the visual language I had developed was of an urban vernacular and thus not easily transcribed into the Shetland landscape. So my work began to change from a search for shape and narrative in the landscape to a more painterly, colourful language, veering towards abstraction.
A large proportion of my Shetland landscape work is painted outside. Working directly from nature shatters all preconceptions and is a constant battle in looking and feeling my way through the myriad of unnameable colours and changing shapes. Sometimes the elements paint the pictures; ice freezes my paint into crystalline forms and wind blows my paint across the page. This sheer force of the elements gives the pictures an energy and dynamism that is impossible to replicate in the relative comfort of the studio. I often paint in the dark, guided by the sound and smell of the ocean. I work on many pictures at a time guided by my quest for strong composition.
Winter seems to be the time when I am most driven as a painter; sunny flat calms move me least whilst a winter gale has me rushing for my brushes. The intense darkness of a Shetland winter seems to magnify visually and emotionally the short glimpse of light we get. The sun sits low on the horizon, casting a powerful sidelight over everything. A few times a year the northern lights dance their way through the midnight sky, making one sit in absolute awe in the knowledge of something more powerful than ourselves. I try my hardest to paint this.
I am something of a hybrid of an artist, part urban part rural, and my art reflects this alliance. I am interested in the harmonies and tensions between the world of nature and the world of man, and no subject is out of bounds. I constantly experiment with different media, including digital art, created on an iPhone, photography, drawing, painting and printmaking. My recent series of sumi ink drawings, called 'Today', fuses daily world events reported via various places on the internet with whatever I see around me in the Shetland wilderness on that same day. Nature collides with culture; there is no utopia without reality.
Paul Bloomer, 2016.
Four years labouring in a metal pressing factory after leaving school was a formative influence, and went a long way in forming my vision. I used little colour during these years as my world view didn’t seem big enough to find colour and beauty among the smoking chimney stacks. Joy in nature evaded me. Charcoal became my medium of choice, seeming to be at one with my subject matter, and large-scale woodcuts forced my often unclear ideas into shape. Most of my work from this area is very autobiographical with a strong sense of narrative, exploring themes such as oppression, exploitation and captivity.
Twenty years ago I discovered Shetland, the most northerly part of Britain, and immediately became entranced by the ever-changing light over the wild landscape and ocean; so against all logic I loaded my etching press in my car and headed north.
The first Shetland work I produced explored themes such as freedom, growth and rebirth. However, I started to become increasingly dissatisfied because I felt that the visual language I had developed was of an urban vernacular and thus not easily transcribed into the Shetland landscape. So my work began to change from a search for shape and narrative in the landscape to a more painterly, colourful language, veering towards abstraction.
A large proportion of my Shetland landscape work is painted outside. Working directly from nature shatters all preconceptions and is a constant battle in looking and feeling my way through the myriad of unnameable colours and changing shapes. Sometimes the elements paint the pictures; ice freezes my paint into crystalline forms and wind blows my paint across the page. This sheer force of the elements gives the pictures an energy and dynamism that is impossible to replicate in the relative comfort of the studio. I often paint in the dark, guided by the sound and smell of the ocean. I work on many pictures at a time guided by my quest for strong composition.
Winter seems to be the time when I am most driven as a painter; sunny flat calms move me least whilst a winter gale has me rushing for my brushes. The intense darkness of a Shetland winter seems to magnify visually and emotionally the short glimpse of light we get. The sun sits low on the horizon, casting a powerful sidelight over everything. A few times a year the northern lights dance their way through the midnight sky, making one sit in absolute awe in the knowledge of something more powerful than ourselves. I try my hardest to paint this.
I am something of a hybrid of an artist, part urban part rural, and my art reflects this alliance. I am interested in the harmonies and tensions between the world of nature and the world of man, and no subject is out of bounds. I constantly experiment with different media, including digital art, created on an iPhone, photography, drawing, painting and printmaking. My recent series of sumi ink drawings, called 'Today', fuses daily world events reported via various places on the internet with whatever I see around me in the Shetland wilderness on that same day. Nature collides with culture; there is no utopia without reality.
Paul Bloomer, 2016.