Artist Rob Pittam, whose influences include Vermeer and Edward Hopper, is showing his work at St Ives’ New Craftsman Gallery for the first time this May.
Mackerel, Bread, and Paper Bag, by Rob Pittam
As a child, Rob spent family holidays in Cornwall, where brilliant sun-drenched summer days on the beach inspired a lifelong awareness of the emotional power of light. As a still life painter, Rob’s focus is on the way Cornwall’s unique light sculpts everyday forms.
He aims for a certain quality of stillness in the tone, texture, and composition of his paintings that give a heightened status to his subjects.
His works often include fish, whose perfectly evolved forms offer colour, pattern, texture, reflectivity, and three-dimensional shapes that ‘sculpt’ light and shade. They can also be read as metaphors for the tranquility of a life spent beside the sea.
He works in a classical technique, using the translucency of acrylic paint over a pencil drawing and monochrome underpainting on board, building tonal depth through multiple glazes of colour. His paintings are also varnished and float framed within a dark grey deep wood moulding.
Rob Pittam studied art and illustration at Rugby College, Swindon College, and Kingston upon Thames University. He has exhibited in Cornwall, the Cotswolds, Bath, and London, and his works are held in private collections in the United States, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and the Shetland Islands.
Rob Pittam, Stil Life Paintings, runs at the New Craftsman Gallery, 24 Fore Street, St Ives, from 4th-17th May.
