County Times photographer’s acrylic art exhibition in Horsham
Steve Cobb - Why I Paint
Known locally as a photographer for the West Sussex County Times based in Horsham, I’ve been with the paper for nearly thirty years.
Only recently have I indulged a long-held passion for painting. As a child I scribbled and sketched but have never really fully immersed myself in the creative waters. That is until about three years ago. I tried pastels, charcoal drawing, ink sketches but acrylics gave me the freedom to experiment in the direction I found most enjoyable.
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Hide AdThe pictures displayed at Horsham Museum and Art Gallery in the Hurst Room represent a cross-section of my efforts in acrylic over the last three years.
I’ve tried different forms of expression, and when first starting a literal representation of what I saw was the ultimate goal. More recently I’ve tried a much looser approach. Afterall, as a photographer what use do I have for an accurate reproduction of a subject? I could photograph it and be done with it.
For me, I’ve come to appreciate the artist has to enter the process more explicitly. The picture must convey more than just a copy of any scene. I want my pictures to convey a mood, my emotional response to a subject. I want to enter the picture as ‘artist’ and transform the image into a feeling, a physical two-dimensional expression of how I respond to the subject.
Sometimes the picture is simply a delight in a particular colour. But isn’t that just an expression of what I feel too?
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Hide AdPainting for me is about pleasure; an escape from tribulations in life. It is about he enjoyment of facing a blank white rectangle and beginning a journey. The process of painting is interactive and the paint can take me in directions I never intended at the outset. But that is indeed the pleasure: the journey. The freedom to take a chance and make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes lead to something so much better than I had ever intended.
Steve Cobb Acrylic Art Exhibition - Horsham Museum and Art Gallery, Hurst Room.
18th December 2013 - 25th January 2014.