Derek Sprawson’s paintings make you think about the meaning of things, they are challenges that require time and effort. You are reminded of characters from ancient cave drawings, but at the same moment these are very ‘modern' artworks.

The artist has chosen this exhibition at Bend in the River to explore notions of scale and depth in his recent paintings, paintings that almost always involve staged still life compositions using what he describes as ‘overlooked’ objects.

Motifs – a toy elephant, a half-eaten bunch of grapes, a twig from a tree – are set against an empty, fragile (the paint-wax mix creating an inherently volatile surface) space, a place at once bruised and brooding.

Sprawson’s ‘characters’ are curiously beguiling. Rendered often with the thinnest of paint, they are as barely there as the space wherein they are located. Throughout, the message is liminal, about the brink of dissolution but also about the enduring pursuit of the created image, the painted trace.

While the paintings in this exhibition range from the large (almost 2 metres square) to the small (25 x 28 cms), the ‘subject' remains the same, and this encourages comparisons. Sprawson intends this exhibition as an opportunity to take a closer look at this process of comparison: viewing a cross-section of paintings as a whole, as investigation, as piecing together the message.

The artist writes: ‘the motif in each of my canvases is set against a vast open space … an emptiness, a wilderness, a desert – a sublime setting for demanding questions … this sense of searching and yearning is of great significance…’

Artist resumé