Gary Spratt, 'Mantle Piece'

These recent paintings are what might be described as “straight paintings”, they are observations with little departure from what was there in reality. The image is refined during its making but essentially the painting is, to me at least, a relatively agreeable and straightforward comparison.

Initially I had intended, pretty much, to do the opposite of what I had been doing which, put simply, was using fragments of imagery and multiple perspectives on a large scale and building up an image in layers over an extended period, using drawings, memories and imagination as a source. The core subject remains consistent, that is the rooms and objects in our home and my studio.

I thought about what might happen if I simply painted what was in front of me more wholly and not broken up at all. One take of a fluid moment. How might I go about that? What would I do? What might seem right? How might that feel now, after all this time?

In the three paintings shown here, are some of the things I have found out. It felt right to get the proportions to be near to life and that colour can be exaggerated. Also that the point of perspective can change during the making of the picture as my head might move about, and the light shifts over time. It all adds up to some sort of truth and with it a discovery about something previously unnoticed. A concretely observed object or a relationship between things which, when it arrives in this painted version of reality might not seem like much at first, but it becomes for a moment a spark of life.

Born in 1971, in Poole, Dorset. Gary attended Poole College in 1988 and then a foundation course at Shelley Park in Bournemouth in 1990. These years were to prove a brief but important introduction to the world of art and painting.

He moved to rural west Dorset in 1991 with Maggie, his then girlfriend and now wife. There followed a near twenty-year hiatus in making art. They raised a family of four children while he worked in arboriculture and horticulture.

In 2011 his interest in painting was rekindled. He built a studio in the garden, read extensively and gradually painting took over the focus of his time.

Gary has been exhibiting his work for the last ten years.  Highlights have been making it onto the shortlist for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2021, showing in London and Huddersfield. In 2022 he was invited to show at Bark Gallery in Berlin. He has been part of the very popular Terrace Gallery mixed shows several times in recent years. He won first prize in the Oxmarket Open Competition 2022, and as a result had a solo show in 2023, called “New Ways To Wear Old Clothes” at Oxmarket Contemporary in Chichester. In July 2024 he exhibited work, together with other painters, in a show called “Au Lapin Agile” at The Safe House in London curated by Toby Ursell. In November 2024 he had a show in Frinton on Sea at the Oasis Cafe called “The Changing Light and the Minds Eye”