Gordon Coldwell
Background
I was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) in 1954. My mother was Dutch and could draw well. Both of these facts are significant in terms of influences and experiences.
As a teenager, my summer holidays were spent in the Dutch seaside town of Scheveningen (my mother’s birthplace). We would stay with my grandmother and visit relatives... great uncles who collected stamps and painted everyday objects in the style of 17th-century artists... an uncle who was a graphic designer. They had landscape and still life paintings on their walls.
Scheveningen is close to the Hague and Amsterdam an easy train journey away. Both places have world-famous art galleries that I visited with a Dutch cousin. To this day, my experience of seeing Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and standing in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch has stayed with me.
My art teacher at secondary school was a graduate of Newcastle University. He had been taught by Richard Hamilton (Pop Artist) and Victor Pasmore (Formal Abstraction). We went to exhibitions at the University’s Hatton Gallery to see exhibitions of work by Kurt Schwitters (Merz/Dada Art) and John Heartfield (Anti Nazi Montage/Collage Art).
My work might broadly be described as ‘Art About Art’ - it is multi-layered in construction and in potential meaning.
Practice
I make my artworks by importing pictorial content into two kinds of image manipulating software, the composition is then constructed, developed and finessed digitally.
By fusing history with contemporary additions, I work with the iconic and the cultural, merging them to create new narratives. I quote from the art of the past so as to reinterpret a way of seeing and thinking that I associate with artists as disparate as Vermeer, Velasquez, Ingres, Manet, Duchamp and Richard Hamilton etc. My artworks are, in part, referential in their intent rather than simply appropriated or copied from masterworks. My imitation is a sincere form of flattery. In addition to explicit references, some may find humour in my alterations.
All of my artworks have the potential to be produced on a very large scale.
Abbreviated CV - Education and Career
Born Newcastle upon Tyne 1954
Bachelor of Education Hons Degree - Warwick University 1976
Art Teacher - Saintbridge School, Gloucester 1976-78
Art & Design Lecturer - West Sussex College of Design 1979-86
Head of Art, Design & Media - Bridgwater College 1987-1996
Marketing Manager - Bridgwater College 1996 - 2007
Owner of I More Than Brand - Marketing Business 2007-2014
Discover contemporary artworks by Gordon Coldwell, browse recent artworks and buy online. Categories: contemporary british artists. Artistic domains: Digital Arts. Account type: Artist , member since 2020 (Country of origin United Kingdom). Buy Gordon Coldwell's latest works on Artmajeur: Discover great art by contemporary artist Gordon Coldwell. Browse artworks, buy original art or high end prints.
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The artist is under 30 years old
Biography
Background
I was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK) in 1954. My mother was Dutch and could draw well. Both of these facts are significant in terms of influences and experiences.
As a teenager, my summer holidays were spent in the Dutch seaside town of Scheveningen (my mother’s birthplace). We would stay with my grandmother and visit relatives... great uncles who collected stamps and painted everyday objects in the style of 17th-century artists... an uncle who was a graphic designer. They had landscape and still life paintings on their walls.
Scheveningen is close to the Hague and Amsterdam an easy train journey away. Both places have world-famous art galleries that I visited with a Dutch cousin. To this day, my experience of seeing Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and standing in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch has stayed with me.
My art teacher at secondary school was a graduate of Newcastle University. He had been taught by Richard Hamilton (Pop Artist) and Victor Pasmore (Formal Abstraction). We went to exhibitions at the University’s Hatton Gallery to see exhibitions of work by Kurt Schwitters (Merz/Dada Art) and John Heartfield (Anti Nazi Montage/Collage Art).
My work might broadly be described as ‘Art About Art’ - it is multi-layered in construction and in potential meaning.
Practice
I make my artworks by importing pictorial content into two kinds of image manipulating software, the composition is then constructed, developed and finessed digitally.
By fusing history with contemporary additions, I work with the iconic and the cultural, merging them to create new narratives. I quote from the art of the past so as to reinterpret a way of seeing and thinking that I associate with artists as disparate as Vermeer, Velasquez, Ingres, Manet, Duchamp and Richard Hamilton etc. My artworks are, in part, referential in their intent rather than simply appropriated or copied from masterworks. My imitation is a sincere form of flattery. In addition to explicit references, some may find humour in my alterations.
All of my artworks have the potential to be produced on a very large scale.
Abbreviated CV - Education and Career
Born Newcastle upon Tyne 1954
Bachelor of Education Hons Degree - Warwick University 1976
Art Teacher - Saintbridge School, Gloucester 1976-78
Art & Design Lecturer - West Sussex College of Design 1979-86
Head of Art, Design & Media - Bridgwater College 1987-1996
Marketing Manager - Bridgwater College 1996 - 2007
Owner of I More Than Brand - Marketing Business 2007-2014
- Nationality: UNITED KINGDOM
- Date of birth : unknown date
- Artistic domains:
- Groups: Contemporary British Artists
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The Influence of the Political (Anti Nazi) Art of John Heartfield
When I was 16, in 1970, my secondary school art teacher took me to see an exhibition of work by the German anti-war artist, John Heartfield, at Newcastle University’s Hatton Gallery, in the NE of England. The exhibition left a lifelong impact on my thinking about the importance of art as a means of communicating concerns about political developments that have the potential to lead to conflict and social unrest.
At the time of writing, I am 65… approximately 50 years on from the John Heartfield exhibition I saw as a teenager. Still fresh in my memory - Heartfield's works appeared as profound, apocalyptic and poster-like compositions.
I spent 30 years working in colleges… 20 years as a lecturer and Head of Art, Design & Media and 10 years as a Marketing Manager. I left the education sector and ran my own successful Branding & Marketing Business for 10 years. For the past 5 years, I have been making artworks every day.
My preoccupation is always concerned with the message, meaning and the ongoing development of my own pictorial language.
During the past three years, the political landscape in the UK (re BREXIT) and USA (re Trump), and elsewhere, seems to me to have undergone a significant shift to the right. With populist politicians strategically presenting contrived, accusative, provocative and distorted bite-sized phrases that are essentially emotive, manipulating and pandering. These messages are the essence of today’s ‘climate of ideas’ and have Nationalist appeal. My response has and continues to be one of making artworks, often remaking, re-modeling and re-populating ‘Old Master’ painting compositions to present oblique and, at times, humorous or ambiguous narrative and comment on, for example, President Trump’s extremely odd, self-caricatured appearance and behavior. His use of language, his spitefulness (etc) - all point to a potential for extreme outcomes… AND… the politicians responsible for the disharmony and fracture that is self-evident in the UK because of the whole BREXIT process, which could ultimately have a seriously damaging impact on the UK’s economy and social cohesion.
View 600+ artworks organized in themed collections - click on individual works to view large: http://www.coldwellandcoldwell.co.uk/...
All f my digital paintings are capable of large scale print production onto a range of surfaces i.e. size up to an beyond 2M x 2M
Art About Donald Trump
Art About BREXIT
Art About Art
Art Men & Virtual Exhibitions