Description

Watercolour and pastel painted on Artistico Fabriano watercolour paper. Signed. On wove.

Condition

In fine condition.

Collection Information

Young finds inspiration all around him and a subject he frequently returns to is the ballet dancer. Working from memory, the ballet dancer is a vehicle through which he explores the human form in one of its most impressive manifestations. Looking at these works, executed with careful yet expressive line and rich in texture, it is difficult to ignore the inspiration Young finds in the Impressionists and of course Degas in particular.

Biography

Born in the leafy suburbs of Woking, Surrey in 1954, Richard's family moved to Australia a year later where they settled near Adelaide, and then in Woomera in South Australia. It was in Australia that Richard first began to discover his passion for the arts. Living in Woomera's arid and dry landscape, Richard became fascinated by colour and abstraction, using the library as his inspiration. He revelled in books displaying the paintings of Impressionist artists, particularly the works of Cézanne and Matisse whose works offered a vibrant contrast to the landscape that surrounded him at the time. Young was particularly drawn by Turner's earlier landscapes and the pastiches that followed them, in particular the works of Mark Rothko. These influences stayed with Young throughout his life and career and he often consults the same books as a source of continual inspiration.

Richard obtained a PhD in Chemical Physics at the University of Kent in Canterbury and has spent his life building a reputable career working in the field of solar energy. Young has stated that he had “chose to join his interests in art and science...I was inspired as a teenager by Leonardo Di Vinci who as a Renaissance man joined art and the sciences and pioneered many of the techniques of art and technology”. Richard manifested this grouping by designing pigments for ceramic glazes and also inks for screen printed electronic applications.

Richard J S Young's artistic process indicates an artist who reflects the currents and motions of the outside world. Music is a strong influence on his art, most recently the electric duo Blondes.

His influences are diverse, extending to music, the figure, the sea and the desert. Current influences are drawn from the abstract expressionist works of Richard Diebenkorn, but greatly from Scottish artist Barbara Rae, whose ‘intense colour bursts that evoke dramatic landscapes but remain resolutely abstract' [RA Magazine, 2014], much in the same character of Young's works exhibited in this collection.

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For our full collection of Richard J.S. Young click here and for our artist spotlight piece on Richard Young see here