Haydn Cottam Exhibition 2008 |
Oil Paintings 1990-2008
5–19 July 2008
Foundry Gallery
An artemis|arts exhibition
Haydn Cottam was raised in Merseyside and studied painting at St Martins. His work is based on close observation of life and nature. He has won major awards for portrait painting.
Influences include Courbet, John Singer Sargent, Whistler, Stanley Spencer, Lucien Freud and the British ‘Kitchen Sink Painters of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s
Haydn Cottam first came to the Lewes area when he was a student in the early Eighties. He went to a party at Charleston Farm House and was struck by the beauty of the Sussex countryside. The memory of this experience stayed with him and after this, and trips to Dorset, Wales and the Scottish Highlands, landscapes began to appear within the urban interiors in his portrait and narrative figure paintings.
Haydn enjoys nature in a vigorous, active way and spends time walking and cycling through open countryside in various parts of the world. These experiences influenced him deeply and in the early Nineties he began to create large, stunning paintings of spectacular scenes. In some of these, rectangles, or windows within the picture surface suggest changes in light and mood.
Influences - Turner, Constable and Casper David Friedrich.
The inner and outer journey of the artist can be experienced through this wide-ranging collection of paintings and drawings.
Awards
1991 BP Portrait Award National Portrait Gallery
1992 BP Travel Award National Portrait Gallery
1994 Carroll Foundation Award, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London.
Numerous solo and group exhibitions in the UK and USA