Ray Richardson (born 1964) is a British painter. He lives and works in London.
Ray Richardson | |
|---|---|
 Richardson in 2017. | |
| Born | 1964 London |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Saint Martin's School of Art; Goldsmiths College |
| Known for | Painting |
| Awards | British Council Award; BP Portrait Award |
Richardson spent his childhood in the Woolwich Dockyard area. He graduated from Saint Martin's School of Art (1983–1984) and Goldsmiths College (1984–1987),[1] he won his first British Council Award in 1989 and the BP Portrait Award in 1990. At the same time, he began a long collaboration with three galleries: Boycott Gallery in Brussels, Galerie Alain Blondel in Paris and Beaux Arts gallery in London. Since 2016, he collaborates with the Zedes Art Gallery in Brussels.
Richardson paints observations of his world of working class southeast London. In 1993, the Telegraph Magazine commissioned him paintings and drawings of the world heavyweight champion boxer Lennox Lewis which were then offered by the magazine to and accepted by the National Portrait Gallery.[2]
Over time, he has depicted not only everyday scenes in southeast London but a larger social panorama, mixing criticism, humour and personal concerns. Richardson uses his very emblematic English Bull Terrier[3] as a metaphor or double[4] in his narration which takes places in urban or coastal landscapes, caravans and football fields.
Both filled with pictorial tradition (Titian, Goya, Hogarth, Hopper) and contemporary cultures (soul music, photography), his works are characterised by a formal closeness with cinema. Interested in Film noir movies amongst other genres of film, he tries "to combine the traditional stuff of painting with the cinematic ways of looking at things". Because of his subjects and the transposition of filmmaker techniques (close-up, horizontal formats, use of shadow to create drama), he has been dubbed by Lindsay MacCrae (GQ magazine) as the "Martin Scorsese of figurative painting",[5] and Iain Gale (The Independent) stated: "There is a filmic quality in these works which proposes Ray Richardson as a David Lynch of canvas and paint."[6]
In 2014–2015, two of his works are part of Reality: Modern and contemporary British painting, an exhibition about the most influential painters from the last sixty years at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts[7] and the Walker Art Gallery,[8] alongside Francis Bacon, Ken Currie, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Paula Rego, George Shaw, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, etc.
In 2017, the young Belgian director, Nina Degraeve, dedicated a short documentary entitled "Our side of the water" to Richardson.
