Manchester Local Artists (17)

Buxton at Night II

Car Park

Memorial

Al’s Pizzeria

Oil Refinery

Forest

Nathan Birchenough

The Artist

Nathan Birchenough was born in 1985 and has
lived in Buxton in Derbyshire since 1997, when he moved there
from Merseyside. He recently finished his A-Levels at Buxton
Community School and is now studying at Chesterfield College.
His work has been featured in several exhibitions at his school
and at Buxton Museum & Art Gallery, and his first solo exhibition
of paintings begins in January 2004 at the same venue.

Most of his work so far is inspired by Buxton
and the countryside of Derbyshire, and by the urban and industrial
landscapes of Merseyside. He called his exhibition “Wilderness”
because of the frequently bleak images he produced, representative
of the natural and man-made wildernesses of our planet and symbolic
of both humanity’s constant consumption of natural resources,
and of our separation as individuals.

Despite their bleakness, he believes that
even the most industrialised landscapes have their own beauty
and can be seen in the same way as traditional pastoral scenes,
especially his view of the rarely-seen industrial side of Buxton,
“Buxton at Night II” and a series of paintings
of oil refineries. In some of the works such as “Forest”
(not shown here), and the oil refinery series he explores the
concept of cities and industrial complexes as organisms in their
own right, their shapes determined by their need to consume
natural resources, in the same way that forests or patches of
algae grow. In this way humanity can be seen as an extension
of nature, part of it rather than engaged in a battle with it.

This theme of shapes governed by laws of
nature runs through most of his paintings; he created the smoky
patterns of “Forest” by holding a burning torch
beneath the canvas, which allowed him to form an image by natural
means which he had little control over. He allowed the paint
run on many canvasses for the same reason – the act of painting
becomes a natural process.

All paintings are for sale – prices are negotiable.

Nathan will also take commissions for portrait work (from photos
or from life). Charges are £25 for an A4 pencil drawing,
£70 for an A4 – size painting.

Nathan Birchenough can be contacted by:

• Telephone: 01298-77752
• Mobile: 0771 936 3203
• Email here.