Will Thorburn
Based London, UK
About
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I am a British artist working in London and the South East. Having studied Critical Fine Art Practice at Brighton University, I completed my MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2016.
My work has been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout the UK, including those at Schwartz Gallery, Alon Zakaim Fine Art, and Candid Arts Trust. I have also been featured at Art Miami and The Other Art Fair.
My work combines both the decorative and the anatomical to create an intermediate space in which the organic and inorganic merge. Saturating the canvas with bright, clean colours, forms emerge suggestive of limbs, internal organs, and plants intertwined in ambiguous combinations.
Education
- 2016: MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins
- 2004 - 2007: BA Critical Fine Art Practice, Brighton University
- 2003 - 2004: Foundation Art and Design, Filton, Bristol
Purchase artwork by Will Thorburn
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Achievements & Goals
- My MA (Distinction) from Central St Martins
- Time to develop your work is always the biggest luxury for an artist and to be able to work full time on my practice is my biggest dream
- To visit countries whose landscape and flora/ fauna have inspired my work, such as Madagascar or parts of South America, and spend a protracted time there putting new material together
- To gain a technical level where I can combine the influences that inspire me in paintings that are relevant, exciting, and bursting with colour which inspires and animates the viewer
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Genre & Style
- My paintings simultaneously create and resist a sense of depth; flat areas of colour dominate the canvases, yet arches and apertures intimate three-dimensional space
- Palm trees, vines, and cacti surround fragments of reclining nudes and fractured bodies in indeterminate gardens and courtyards. These dissected figures are painted with simple forms and vigorous lines, at once innocent and unnerving
- The oil paint is applied in an increasingly loose and playful manner, as the colour palette has become more intense, reflecting my interest in the combination of the organic and synthetic
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Inspiration & Vision
- English seaside culture (beach balls, postcards and sunburn)
- Medieval painting (with its lack of accurate perspective and its awkward use of space)
- Exotic plants and landscapes (I often think about holidays I have never had in aspects of my work, including elements of skewed imagery of tropical flora and fauna taken from book, the web and my own imagination)
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Sales & Trajectory
- Already sold works
- Self-financed
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Technique & Material
- Oil on canvas
- Oil pastel on paper
- Chalk, charcoal on paper
