Artworks by Richard Meyer

I guess I'm an old school painter, believing in the sanctity of the studio: it's a separate world to the outside where different rules apply.  Here is a place of smelly, fantastic, mucky, tactile, 'plastic' oil paint where models can feel free and relaxed. It's a special place.

My working practice involves traditional drawing and sketching with Oil pastels on silk art paper but sometimes I dive straight in with thick oil paint depending on my mood and the subject matter.  Inspiration is very important but once I start nothing much comes in the way.

I've been around a long time and done lots of things, mostly good, I hope, but probably not all.  They’ve included Zoologist (Glasgow University - PhD re-establishing Chough in England), Naturalist (Conservationist/Ecologist/Badger campaigner), Writer (12 books & ~100 articles/papers), Illustrator, Cinema projectionist, Primary School teacher, FE lecturer, Cricket coach and Biker... 
… but none as demanding as art and painting: the toughest thing I've ever done.  Direct expressionist painting is very demanding and tiring.  My work is raw and deliberately unpolished; also I use whatever salvaged material for supports and frames I can find or get given.  As a species we waste so much, no other species wastes anything.

Fine Art should be an inspiring reflection on the human condition and our relationship with the natural world - including our relationship with each other.

One critic said, “Richard Meyer’s paintings are vibrant and expressionistic, emerging from the margins of an eternal triangle, where Civilization meets Nature - meets Man - meets Woman.”  

That sums it up pretty well but my work is best described as expressionist because for me Fine Art is a synthesis of Nature, the Real World and one's emotive reaction to it.  I also believe that oil paintings should be about the substance (plasticity) of the stuff itself (the Painted thing or Object), and not merely an imitation of something else (the Observed Subject).