For as long as Andy can remember he has been obsessed with portraying invisible worlds, hidden symbolism and universal truths through art laced with meaning. To the outsider his paintings and drawings often appear dark and disturbing, often vulgar or needlessly sexual. However the merest scratching of the metaphorical surface reveals spiritual ideas and old philosophies, the portrayal of which has been forgotten by most due to the rise of modernism and what it did to the collective conscience of the human race.

Primarily inspired by contemporary art from Asia and Japan along with comic and surreal art in the west. Jumping between traditional materials and digital painting methods Andy creates a wide variety of work in differing styles.

Studying life in great detail, he takes the tiniest stimulus and explores it through meditation until whatever hidden world it has created is captured as accurately as he can manage. Andy seldom shares the meaning behind his art, believing art to be a very personal thing, only those closest to him ever get any idea of what he’s thinking. He also likes to poke fun at aspects of art he does not like, often in a very subtle way within his work.

Exhibitions

• 2009- FATE Exhibition Glenrothes fife- (5 pieces exhibited and for sale)
• 2009- Transition Extreme Skate Park (large wall painting)
• 2008- No Tears magazine (7 pieces published)
• 2008- Holburn Gallery Aberdeen (10 pieces exhibited)
• 2008- Milton of Crathes Banchory (5 prints on sale)
• 2004- Garioch Artists Exhibition (2 pieces exhibited)
• 2003- Garioch Artists Exhibition (2 pieces exhibited)

Education and Work History

• 2006/2008- 2 years Fine Art Grays School of Art Aberdeen
• 2005- Volunteer work with Peacock Visual Arts assisting artists in residence
• 2004/2005- 1 year Fine Art Aberdeen College
• 2004- Volunteer work with Peacock Visual Arts on ASS Project

Andy’s Website

www.eatyourbiscuit.com

Andy’s Gallery

A student of Saint Martins, where he was a peer of Gilbert and George, Long first came to prominence as a young geometrical perfectionist in the 1960s, seeking new and fresh ways of engaging with the natural landscape. What this has led to, fortunately, has been decades of scaling the planet, drawing lines in terrains, casting circles in fields, using the planet as an exploratory canvas through subtle toying, leaving no mark.

This retrospective deals with the lengthy voyages Long has made, and the results are a richly visual, deeply evocative display of sculptures, measurements and musings on the relationship between mankind and planet.

Dusty Boots Line (1988)

Long himself is a trace, but you can sense the figure and his mindset in every corner, from his beginnings as a student taking a train to a field and walking back and forth until he’d established a line – a “groundbreaking” merger of sculpture and psychogeography at a time when artists were struggling with the concept, according to curator Clarrie Wallis – to invisible snakes through ten miles of Exmoor.

Wallis says Long’s work reflects his self-appointment as a successor to cave painters, taking simple, universal shapes and using organic textiles, “touching the earth lightly” through daisy-formed crosses and randomly rearranged stones.

It looks organic as well, betraying no sign of being artificially-formed, left entirely exposed to the elements. “I think that’s the thing about him,” suggests Wallis. “He has a very straightforward, very pragmatic approach to art. It’s real action in real time.”

Wallis exults his textual works, positioning narratives from Long’s mind in enormous fonts, centred on walls like giant thought bubbles in glimpses of his ideas and actions. She’s particularly fond of Walking Music, a list of songs Long played in his head. “From there you get a sense of the rhythm and pace of his walk,” she says.

A Line in Scotland (1981)

Like all great exhibitions, it manages not only to transform the walls and panelled floors, but also to transport us to these incredible panoramas and rugged terrains which have become a playground for Long’s pilgrimages and tinkering. All too often photographers and travelling artists leave their audience trailing in their wake, offering fleeting appreciation rather than giddy intoxication. Anyone could traipse across sections of Dartmoor or the Andes, as Long has, and return with a camera full of picture postcards or office wall hangings, as Long could inevitably be accused of.

But here is a conceptualist, opening himself to the imperfection of the places he chooses – jagged rocks in Iceland, sticks placed on beaver dams – which make him seem almost at the mercy of the environment, eschewing predictable landscapes in preference for those which are most compelling, and calling the conspicuous element of luck this involves his “intuition”.

One astonishing piece, White Water Line, takes Cornish china clay from a pit in St Austell and flings it at a wall, daubing and crafting the material until it strings from ceiling to floor, dripping into the crevasses of the space. “You have this extraordinary sense of the physicality of the process,” says Wallis, surveying the gravity of the piece.

A Line in the Himalayas (1975)

Nowhere is more physical than the room of six stone sculptures taking up one gallery, monuments of his own from an artist prone to starting off at Stonehenge at sunrise and arriving in Glastonbury by sunset on a midsummer’s day.

It’s the first time Tate Britain has opened up the space to an individual in this way, aiming to “create a landscape” for people to walk through. Flint from Norfolk, Swiss stones, basalt and red slate bring a permanency to the transience of the land.

The precision of their actual formation is accurate to the point of being clinical, but Long neither tries nor wants to dramatise what he sees. “I see it as abstract art laid down in the real spaces of the world,” he explains, having started his adventures after finding the “language and ambition” of art was “too formal and orthodox”, ignoring the natural world.

“To make art only by walking, or leaving ephemeral traces here and there, is my freedom. I can make art in a very simple way, but on a huge scale in terms of miles,” he points out. His visions are awesome and vast, but the presentation of them is a homage to the joys of simplicity.

Original Article: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art69116

Through the study of botanical sources of inspiration, James’s work exists as pieces of collected, abstracted, surreal and almost alien piece of sculptural glass. Derived from many different points of reference, such as twisting vines and microscopic pollen, James explores form, space, material and texture, using only the purity of transparent glass and light.

 James’s work to date has been described as ‘baroque’* and at the same time, through the non-existent use of color, it is perfectly at home within the minimal Bauhausian architectural cityscape that we exist in. Through his work he attempts to communicate his feelings towards the material and show a desire to reflect the beauty of the minimal age we live in, whilst at the same time, James adds a flourish of organic surrealism.

Artist Biography

About the Artist, – 
Born in the UK and initially a studio potter for 10 years, James has only been working in glass for approximately 4 years. Having graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, with an MA in Applied Arts, he is currently managing to make a living designing and making bespoke lighting in London, Europe and the US, for corporate and private clients.
 Recent exhibtions include the Bombay Sapphire Prize 2008, Milan, Design Basel 2008, Switzerland, Design Miami, Florida, 2008, Design Art London, 2008 and Verre Contemporain I Londres at Perimeter Edition Ltd, Paris, France.

www.jameslethbridgeglass.com