Venue address: 54 Tarrant Street, Arundel BN18 9DN
Andy Waite was born in the UK and studied graphic design at West Sussex College of Art and Design, graduating in 1977, LSIAD.
Though travelling occasionally to Scotland, Europe and North Africa, he has lived and worked in the West Sussex town of Arundel, surrounded by the South Downs for more than 40 years. He is represented by several galleries across the UK and holds three open house exhibitions a year. His work is widely collected both nationally and internationally.
He has published three books of his paintings with accompanying poems and one book of his poems illustrated with black and white photographs.
As a young adult emerging from a monotone, restrictive and archaic education into the liberating and vibrant cultural scene of the late 60’s and 70’s, he could finally begin to unfold and explore his innate artistry through music, poetry and painting, the mediums of each consistently influencing the other. Working and playing with the harmonics of colour and their nuanced resonances has been a life-long passion, driven by an irrepressible inner necessity.
If natural forms are the archetypal structures giving his work its grammar, it is his affinity with colour and the many unspoken, poetic languages and realms it conveys, that is central to the intuitive, expressive compositions. Lively, spontaneous, sometimes paint laden, sometimes dry, with wide brushstrokes, linear gestural motifs and colour balancing, layers are added, scraped, scratched and worked into over several weeks. Canvases are often left turned to the wall so as to see them afresh at each reworking. Gradually the alchemy of paint, the unconscious and the imagination, on the now textured and multilayered surface, reveals the hitherto unknown and unseen. The resulting work is only considered complete if the painting, whose contours may have initially grown out of the South Downs or other loved locations, now speaks to the poetry of places that reside in longed for imaginings.
Instagram: @andywaitepaintings
Facebook: Andy Waite Paintings
Tel: 07570 807954