Moments With Dad - June 25th - July 7th 2024, At The Chair -A Gallery at Hay on Wye.
Moments With Dad - Press Release
UPDATE:- The Show has been extended for a week. If you wish to visit Hay to come and see it here is a guide of other things to do here:
https://roadbook.com/london/travel/hay-on-wye-hotels-restaurants-things-to-do/
20/06/2024 Press Release:
An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Tom Evans.
Moments with Dad will be presented this June at the Chair, Hay-on-Wye, showcasing Tom Evans' most expansive collection to date. The exhibition delves into his enigmatic approach to portraiture, everyday life, and familial bonds.
This series of work is in one sense deeply personal, shaped by Tom’s experience of living with his father on Tom’s journey to become an artist, and his father’s acceptance of this path. On the other, the work invites the viewer to reflect on themes of nostalgia, memory, perception and rediscovery.
Tom's portraits capture essences of moments with his father, revealing a profound yet intangible connection. They evoke introspection and the poignant beauty found in shared moments and solitary reflections.
Notes to Editors
Biography: Tom Evans (b.Barnet, 1978) obtained a BA in Painting from Chelsea College of Arts, graduating in 2000. After a hiatus focusing on more commercial areas of creativity, he returned to the UK from a time spent living and working abroad, in Madrid, Spain, to re-focus on establishing a fine art practice from his home base in rural Monmouthshire at the end of 2017. Tom spent 2022 studying with The Royal Drawing School on their inaugural Online Drawing Development Year, shortly thereafter gaining a place on the final Zabludowicz Masterclass in 2023. He then gained the support of the Arts Council of Wales through their Creative Steps programme as a neurodivergent artist, which allowed him to spend the last academic year completing the Turps Banana Correspondence Course. Tom has recently completed several residencies in Portugal and has also shown work in Wales, London and abroad. His work is included in several private collections. Tom will begin an MA at London's Royal College of Art in September 2024.
The exhibition will take place at The Chair, A Gallery in Hay on Wye.
10 High Town, Hay-on-Wye HR3 5AE, 25th-30th June 10-4pm (until 2pm on Sun 30th)
A private view will take place on Thursday 27th, 6-8.30pm. All welcome.
For further info please contact the artist on 07870 241876 / etomevans@gmail.com
A pdf of further available works is accessible upon request.
Pada Winter Residency, Barriero, (Lisbon, Portugal)
Housed in a former factory building in Barreiro, a separate city to Lisbon on its south shore (accessible by a 20 mins ferry ride), this residency complex founded in 2018 hosts artists for residency periods, normally lasting a month or two, throughout the year. This January I completed a 3 week ‘Winter Residency’ which was more self led than usual.
With generously allocated studio spaces for 9 artists of diverse backgrounds and career stages a small community forms which makes the overall experience similar to an art school mixed with a sort of gathering vibe. Shared meals and excursions to Lisbon and beyond (e.g Sintra) helped us bond and share our enthusiasm for art while learning about and from each other. We also made visits to Lisbon galleries together and to a notable private view of another residency called la junqueira.
We were housed in former worker’s cottages just 2 mins from the studios to which we had 24 hour access, so there was a great opportunity to make considerable progress with my practice while experimenting with new approaches. In the first week, Tim Ralston who runs PADA took us on a tour of the adjacent restricted former industrial zone and many of us, including me reacted to this.
Following on from my sketches, I was asked to paint a portrait, which lead to a series of three, before I resolved to experiment while I had the space to do so with some large group portraits using images taken from excursions out of the compound.
In being nudged into making work in a more direct fluid fashion I was reminded that knowing when to stop and when to abandon a composition is paramount.
Training With The Welsh Academy Of Art
Training in the traditional methods of painting and drawing using the sight-size technique at The Welsh Academy of Art near Crickhowell, Powys.
Since the beginning of June 2023, after a bit of a break from practising (I had what turned out to probably have been covid as I coughed so hard I actually broke a rib), and after attending a wedding in Spain, I’ve been drawing again at the studios of the Welsh Academy of Art, not far from me. It’s run by Lucy, a lady who trained at the Charles H Cecil studios in Florence, which is renowned for giving artists a grounding in the classical techniques as practised by the old masters, through three years of rigorous academic training.
The Academy here exists as one of very few in the UK that pass on such a learning experience at home, and it has so far been a really great opportunity to set aside a month and get a grasp of a particular set of skills that I hope will feed into and improve the quality of my work overall going forward.
All initiates begin by drawing casts and still lives in charcoal, the same size on the paper as they are to the eye, by standing back at a marked position on the studio floor to observe and measure with a piece of thread and a mirror, before walking backwards and forwards repeatedly to make marks on the page. I have begun to progress into oil painting with a limited palette and am looking forward to working with a live model over the next few weeks.
Group Show Studio 22
The Royal Drawing School Online Drawing Development Year curatorial committee hanging work for the Studio 22 show (2023) at The Gallery at Green and Stone.
This March, the cohort I studied with over last year (2022) called ‘Studio 22’ held a show together for a fortnight at The Green and Stone Gallery in Chelsea. I exhibited several images from the pastel series of my dad. He was in attendance. Everyone recognised him straight away from the works (see below).
It was a compliment to have had one of my images chosen (one of 2 out of about 80+ pictures) as a poster image for the show by the Royal Drawing School tutors Rachel Mercer and Paul Fenner.
It was wonderful to show alongside such a lovely talented group of fellow artists!
Residency at The Arts House Aveiro 2023
A working trip to Portugal in early 2023.
From late January to early March 2023 I spent 5 weeks on a great residency at The Arts House Aveiro, Portugal (about 45 mins south of Oporto), which was facilitated by a grant from a local fund in South Wales. During that time the vibrant colours of the buildings and boats (Aveiro is known as the Venice of Portugal) and the atmosphere of the coastal location by the Atlantic greatly influenced my working process.
I started off responding to the local environment in pastel, then after a conversation with the curator Tiago at the Gulbenkian Foundation space in the city, I settled on spending three weeks making a series of portraits of the people I met there. Mainly a music school supported by the prestigious cultural foundation, the exhibition space where I held the culminating show (below), was an auditorium where intermittent yet regular contemporary art shows are held.
The Arts House, (known as VIC) is the former home of a now deceased, renowned local artist Vacso Branco who made a prolific body of ceramic work and experimental films covertly under the Salazaar regime. The political films were shared with like minded intellectuals and dissenters in a clandestine cinema in the basement, which still functions for concerts and events today. The artist’s grandson, an electronic musician and DJ Hugo runs the space now, and I was informed that it remains an oasis of alternative thought in an otherwise culturally conventional small city.
Although most of my time was focused on work, I made trips to Porto and Lisbon and to the beach. One painting I made was of the fashion model for menswear brand La Paz. Founded by former marketing communications people, La Paz use a pal they’ve met, a local fisherman, for all their photoshoots, to stand out and give the company authentic credo. Having visited the beach in nearby Costa Nova and realised how particularly distinct the Atlantic coastline feels with a strong wind, I felt it would be cool to make a picture of this character on the beach and then approach the brand to exchange the picture for some apparel, which I duly did. My work is now is an international private collection of an established brand!
Aveiro is not known for it’s arts scene, but there is, as I discovered, a large student population and consequently a strong experimental music scene there. It was interesting to attend a few concerts and this part of Portugal is well worth a visit. (I include below some further pictures). The calm of a small city was conducive to focusing on my practice and making a lot of work in a short timeframe.