Chris Gollon Artist Portfolio

We are delighted to announce that the new Gollon ‘app’ has now been released and is available from Apple. In this new application, Chris Gollon reveals the secrets of both his creative processes and his very innovative painting and printmaking techniques. How does a final image in painting come about, both in terms of imagination and execution? In this application, painting by painting, you find out from the artist himself.

In 2009, when Alan Yentob’s BBC1 programme Imagine followed Gollon through painting a commission, Liquitex, the world’s largest manufacturer of artists’ acrylic paints were fascinated by Gollon’s techniques in acrylic paint and approached him directly to find a way of communicating his techniques more widely. Much has been written about oil painting, but comparatively little about acrylic.

This application provides a fascinating insight into the craft of acrylic painting at the very highest and most innovative level, both for art students and art collectors; but also for the general art lover, it is a rare and fascinating insight into a great contemporary artist’s imagination. To download the app (for free) to your iPad, click here: Chris Gollon.

Chris Gollon’s painting ‘Birth’ (60″ x 48″, 153 x 122 cms, acrylic on canvas 2008) was used as an integral part of the story in Breaking Dawn (I), the latest from the Hollywood film series the Twilight Saga. The makers of this huge-grossing Hollywood film series approached Chris Gollon for permission to use the image in a sequence where the Cullens are researching information on Bella’s unborn child in Carlisle’s study. Chris Gollon’s painting is shown in full on screen in the movie twice as Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen in the film) looks online to discover the fate of his and Bella’s unborn child.

The painting itself was painted in 2008, as part of the Early Thoughts series that Chris Gollon painted in preparation for his work on the Being Human project in 2009, when he became Fellow & First Artist in Residence at the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University. The work is reproduced in the Being Human catalogue, along with texts by some of the world’s leading thinkers. The catalogue is available here: Publications. The image is also available from the Bridgeman Art Library’s print-on-demand service: Bridgeman.

Chris Gollon is currently working on a series of new religious works: 12 new paintings inspired by 12 stories from the Bible. They will be shown 2012 – 2014 in a touring exhibition of  British cathedrals, accompanied by a full colour catalogue with text by award-winning novelist Sara Maitland, who wrote the recent book Stations of the Cross (Continuum, London & New York) wholly inspired by and featuring Chris’Gollons Fourteen Stations of the Cross. The painting shown is entitled ‘Madonna of the Apple’ by Chris Gollon (36″ x 28″, 61 x 71cms, acrylic on canvas 2011).

There is a tradition in Europe, particularly Italy, to paint the subject of the Madonna and Child, which has continued to the nineteenth century. Gollon has chosen in this first work to take a modern look at this tradition. Often in the Madonna & Child paintings there are symbol objects, such as the cherry as the fruit of delight of the Blessed, or the shell as a symbol of pilgrimage. However, in his first work, Chris Gollon has chosen the Madonna of the apple, as a symbol of the fruit of Salvation. Artists would often show Jesus playing with the crown of thorns or even the nails of his crucifixion. Gollon has chosen to take this a stage further and has shown his Jesus with the actual wounds of his fate already on his body. Similarly, the running mascara hints at the Mater Dolorosa in Gollon’s own Stations. As art critic Laura Gascoigne (arts writer for Galleries magazine, RA Magazine) wrote of Gollon’s Station IV: Jesus Meets His Mother in The Tablet: ” In Raphael’s Procession to Calvary Jesus passes his Mother without a glance, every ounce of his strength devoted to his struggle, while the fainting Mary, supported by the Women of Jerusalem, forms a feminine subplot to the action. This will not do for a modern Mary. Modern women do not faint; and cannot be so conveniently sidelined. In Gollon’s image, for which he used his son and daughter as models, mother and son meet as partners in sacrifice…..”

Chris Gollon is continuing to do research and to work on these new religious works in preparation for the forthcoming touring exhibition. If you’d like to be updated on the tour and other Gollon exhibitions, sign up to the monthly newsletter: News.

At the end of Chris Gollon’s recent sojourn as invited Artist in Residence at St Mary’s College, Durham University, the College has not only acquired Still Life (I), St Mary’s series (pictured); but will now use the image on all future labels on the College’s bottles of port.

Chris Gollon has just been offered and accepted to be Artist in Residence at St Mary’s College, Durham University, spring term 2011. The Institute of Advanced Study have kindly arranged for Chris to use as his studio the same room in Cosin’s Hall (overlooking Palace Green) that he worked in when a Fellow and First Artist in Residence at the IAS in 2009.

Leading art historian Tamsin Pickeral’s book on Chris Gollon’s life and work has just been published and is available in all good bookshops and on Amazon. Her last publication, published by Merrell (London & New York), was very well received and reviewed by the arts press including very favourably by Frank Whitford in the Sunday Times, and was voted in the top 50 books of 2008 by the Financial Times.

Chris Gollon: Humanity in Art (Hyde & Hughes, London). To buy a copy signed by Chris Gollon simply email info@iapfineart.com with ‘Gollon book’ in subject line. Price: £20 (+ £5 p&p UK, £8 p&p Europe, £14 p&p to rest of world).