Bio
Paul Butterworth completed his BA Hons Painting, Open College of the Arts, University for the Creative Arts in October 2023 and graduates on January 19 2024.
While studying A level sciences at school Paul took English and Art at night school. He went onto the Central School of Speech and Drama and was introduced to colour by a three hour conversation with a friend from Slade one sunny afternoon in Camden in 1976. As a young actor he sold paintings of local beauty spots to earn extra cash (cows were very popular). In his 50s he enrolled on a part time painting degree but life got in the way... however, he did manage 8 year's life drawing.
Finally, when his son went to university in 2015, he tried again... and succeeded.
When not painting Paul is acting. You can see his work here: https://vimeo.com/253645744
Artist's Statement
I paint to connect.
When I connect with a painting I lose myself and 'become' somebody else, just like when I'm acting in between 'Action' and 'Cut'. I am connecting with the artist's subconscious and am changed by the experience. This can happen with any kind of art whatever its 'meaning', its subject matter, if it has a message, or if it's traditionally beautiful or ugly. For example when I came out of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam the sky was a brighter blue and the greens more intense, and the world was a happier place... it was as if I was seeing the world through Van Gogh's eyes rather than my own.
On my canvas colours and shapes become personalities not illusionistic tools. They talk to each other like actors in a film... they lie, they feel happy or sad, they resolve their dramas... but unlike film there are no words.
I contemplate every shape and colour before I commit it to the canvas. Each new colour becomes the starting point for the next colour, like a line of dialogue needing a response. When the drama of the colours is resolved my painting is complete.
LBW, Acrylic on canvas, 76 x 60 cm, 2023