LOCKDOWN JOURNAL 2.3: Paul Digby #3
Shopping (2021) Paul Digby
Price: £1,450. Size: A2. Materials: Gouache on paper
In another recent interview that we did, you referred to the space between realism and abstraction, taking Mondrian as an example and saying how it is the point in between these two states that interests you. Your digital era methods of creating these fields into which colour is applied in blocks seem to further accentuate the idea that everything is an illusion to be revealed; colour itself being an illusion. Objects in themselves have no inherent colour, in fact colour is only reflected back to the eye by the breaking down of white light as it hits the surface of objects. In this process objects absorb all colours apart from the ones that it cannot, and those are the ones that we see. The narrative here seems to talk about the illusion inherent in our view of the world. Nothing is what it seems. Everything is black and white but we not only perceive shades of grey but also a plethora of colours and shades in everything.
Do you think what you are doing, and Mondrian's breaking down of observable forms into pure abstraction of line and colour, has the effect of trying to simplify some of the more complex ideas about what art is trying to communicate, and maybe about how we view the complexities of life?
“I think I engage with a positive reductionism to understand what I am seeing and to translate this in to colour, shape and form.”
For more work by Paul Digby visit: http://www.pauldigby.co.uk
About Paul Digby
Paul was born in Grimsby North Lincolnshire and studied in Norwich University of the Arts and the Bretton Hall/University of Leeds. Paul lived in London before returning to Leeds, where he is based with his family.
He has regularly taught across education and he formerly sat on the Steering Group for the Yorkshire and Humber Visual Arts Network, part of the UK's Contemporary Visual Arts Network.
Paul is currently working on a series of drawings and sculptures of people in the Emergency Services in Classical poses to be exhibited in the EAST gallery and York College Gallery.
He has exhibited in solo and group shows in amongst others the Saatchi Gallery, the Wellcome Museum, Manchester Contemporary, the Bowes Museum, Bankside Gallery, Huddersfield Gallery, Tullie House Gallery and Leeds City Gallery.
WEBSITE: www.pauldigby.co.uk
WEBSITE: AXIS
WEBSITE: Portraits of Emotions
CONTACT: pauldigby@me.com
TWITTER: @DigbyPaul