RICHARD CROSS

About me

I was born and raised in the East Midlands of the UK. After leaving school I studied art at Derby College of Art and Technology, Liverpool Polytechnic, and at the Royal Academy Schools in London. Later I worked for six years as a tutor at Blackpool and Fylde College, then for twenty-five years at Blackburn College. Since 2016 I have been able to paint full-time, but still do a little independent part-time teaching such as occasional practical demonstrations, and talks on art history to art groups and societies.

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My artwork is rooted in analytical drawing from observation, and drawing is at the heart of my interests and concerns as an artist. The starting point for my much of my work is the people and places I know best and which form part of my everyday life and experiences. I aim to engage as intensely as possible both with the subject and the materials I use to represent the subject. For me a significant part of the challenge of making art is to try to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary and interest or beauty in the things we often overlook or take for granted. My usual working method is to build up images through an accumulation and distillation of observations, repeatedly layering, revising and reworking pictures over time. Gradually through this process of selecting, editing and transcribing perceptions the pictures become an interface between the exterior world of visual appearances and the interior world of my thoughts and emotions, when a balance has been achieved I regard them as being finished. Today the internet, digital media, and moving images with sound dominate our world, however I believe in the counter balancing importance of reflection, quiet contemplation, slow intensive looking, and in the value of hand-made drawings and paintings.

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