The Artist
Born in
Salford in 1950, educated at Bolton University and the University
of Salford, studying Art and Design, and later Graphics Design.
Working
mostly in acrylics on canvas, graphite, photography, digital
illustration and more recently fused glass. His painting is
mostly abstract, building textures and overlaying with acrylics
and metallics. The tendency is towards the clean and bright
using subtly blended colours to create a vivid, striking and
very often highly glossed image.
Of his work,
Gerard says:
"My
drawings by contrast are of a more photographic nature, finely
worked and detailed, echoing the realism of the subject matter,
which is usually figurative."
Gerard began
working digitally after completing his honours degree in 2000,
and worked as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator for a communications
company. He worked on mobile phone games, wallpapers and corporate
design, also undertaking all traditional and digital illustration
work.
Much of
his own photographic work was used as illustrative content,
montaged to create a more direct means of communication and
focal point to the often in depth and complex text.
For the
last three years Gerard has been working in glass fusion, designing
and creating abstract glass wall hangings with a dynamic and
three dimensional aspect. All work being hand-made to order
using pigmented ground glass and metals, fused for over 24 hours
at over 800 degrees centigrade.
His fused
glass portfolio consists of over 70 designs which have been
sold nationally through many outlets, retail and commission
based.
His artistic
interests are diverse; from the children's book illustrators
Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham, contemporary painters Jenny
Saville, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud and multimedia artist H.R.Giger,
among many others.
Gerard is
strongly influenced by the work of contemporary artistic photography,
composing images spontaneously through the confines of a viewfinder
leads to some amazing images, even more so when using the manipulation
and enhancement techniques available through various computer
packages.
The learning
of new techniques and continual personal development is important
to Gerard; the movement of ideas from one discipline to another,
exploring and enhancing images through various media has become
central to his way of working.
Contact by email at: gerardhighland@hotmail.com
or by telephone on: 0161-736 7183.
