Oscar Godfrey, Contemporary Painter

 

Oscar Godfrey’s Work as a Contemporary Artist

Oscar Godfrey, Work from Fat Exotic Exhibition, 2011

Oscar Godfrey, Fat Exotic Exhibition, 2011

Philip Guston is best known for these late existential and lugubrious paintings.  These abstract works from the 50’s was Godfrey’s influence for his contemporary painting today.  Some of Gustons’ work is featured below.  Godfrey also informed us of other influences that led him to where he is today.  He told us that more often than not he never remembered how he made his work he just arrived at his final piece.

Guston, Oasis 57

Guston

Along with figurative work from Guston, Tomma Abts was also an artist that inspired Godfrey.  His work become through shadows and texture, it is seen to be quite physical and therefore considered to be real and not so much an image of something else.  Godfrey explained that the forms within the piece do not stand for anything else, they do not symbolise or describe anything out of the painting.  They simply represent themselves.

Tomma Abts, Teite 2008

All of these art works formed the basis for Godfrey’s Mineral Series entered for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2011.  He titled his piece’s from a book, taking titles or words out of context which compliments the idea behind the work.

Oscar Godfrey, Mineral 9, John Moores Painting Prize Winner, (2011)

This next influence for future work by Oscar Godfrey is something I was particularly interested in, I was truly fascinated by the concept “everything relates to everything.”  Below is Jeremy Deller’s work exhibited at the Tate in 2004.

The history of the World, 1997-2004

The History of the World is a graphic and textual portrayal of the history, influence and context for acid house and brass band music. Adopting the form of a flow diagram, it suggests that there are social and political echoes and points of confluence between these two musical movements that date from different eras; acid house being a post-industrial movement of the late twentieth century, and the brass band movement dating from the industrial era of the nineteenth century.