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Christopher
P. Wood, 1996
'Somehow I was trying to link the earth to the skies or the stars to the
earth… it is easy to see this as a metaphor for the more spiritual
side of my nature and I wouldn't seek to deny this obvious equation. Everything
has a dual nature, in fact my own relationship with my imagination is
a perfect example of this, on the one hand there is my everyday practical
self, the one that gets up, goes to work, primes canvas and washes brushes,
and then there is this rampant imagination that hates these mundane things
and causes havoc when I am not painting.'
'Heaven Sent Pictures by Christopher
Wood'
Ian Skelly, Long & Ryle from 1st
February.
'It is a bold ambition to paint Heaven but that is what Christopher Wood
has achieved in a finely executed series for a new collection at Long
& Ryle. These are not ‘made-up’ scenes so much as experiences
of the inner landscape of the heart, sought during demanding episodes
in his rooftop studio in Leeds.
Wood studied at Chelsea and began his career in London but returned to
Leeds in the 1980s to reconnect with his roots. That quest has since revealed
just how deeply reality is rooted in the spiritual; that the core of consciousness
is unfettered by the artificial metering of time and space. This awareness
imbues his work with a serene calm and makes perfect sense of reincarnation.
Figures rise gently from the lower world through a smoky abyss, stripped
of their weighty egos to return to the unbounded sky of pure consciousness.
They do so with the complete acceptance which comes from true communion.
All his landscapes take inspiration from his regular communion with Warfedale,
a craggy stretch of woodland just north of Leeds. It is a place somewhat
bitten by its proximity to the city, which is the atmosphere conveyed
by the other series in this collection that follows Red
Riding Hood’s struggle through the primal forest. But
her crimson figure searches not for Grandmother, for something else. The
wolf lurks, waiting and watching, but so does the girl, hesitating on
the outer fringe of girlhood. The pull is both ways. She is just as drawn
to the wolf and what lies beyond Eden. Notice the texture of the silver
birches. Not bark so much as the skin of a snake.
Wood takes some astonishing risks with colour combinations and has developed
a mixture for oils and a treatment for canvases which produce a satin-like
finish to what is clearly a technical, high-wire act. But also a subtle
reaction against the egomania of the materialism which he sees as threatening
ever more of our civilisation. How encouraging that a gallery in the midst
of the storm is keen to amplify his voice so confidently.'
The Week
'Trained in Leeds and at the Chelsea College of Art, Wood paints with
a soft sfumato style, reminiscent of Corot, in which the image is blurred
to produce an atmospheric effect. He draws the eye into the canvas through
a series of compositional layers, like the wings of a stage set, to an
ultimate source of light. These are paintings worth coveting and it is
no surprise that Wood's recent show at Harewood House sold out.'
Nicholas
Usherwood, Modern Painters
'As with Nolan, there seems at times almost nothing he can't paint or
make the paint do for him. Focusing so concentratedly on The Pursuit should
not lead one to ignore a wide poetic range that runs from the brooding
mysteries of Three
Fires, with its jagged sheet of grey smoke rising from a
bare, sombre brown landscape into a pale blue-grey sky, to the uneasy
serenity of The Conjuror with its plumes of white cloud that drift diagonally
upwards and outwards from a bowl of dark green and blacky-brown hills
into a lyrical blue and white summer sky, the effect like steam from a
wizard's cauldron. Or the eccentric drifts of white cloud that lead our
eyes slowly up and through the landscape of Clouds Rising, where they
seem, at first, physically implausible, even downright wrong, and then,
finally emotionally, utterly believable. For, as with so much good landscape
painting, you know very well that one day you too will see something like
this yourself.'
Adrian Greenoak, Painting for All
'It was one evening at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London, off Goodge
Street, when I saw some work of Christopher P Wood. Two works in particular
struck me, The
Evolutionist and The
Yearling. These two paintings amount to a new flowering of
a strong English artistic tradition. They speak out of the richness of
the land with a strong instinctive and intuitive vision translated by
a masterful technique. They have a liquid translucence which is stunning,
fascinating, and at last capturing.'
Published Writings
June 2004 Joash Woodrow – Monograph written with
Nicholas Usherwood
August 2003 Alan Davie - Small paintings- Godfrey and
Watt Gallery Catalogue
August 2002 Alan Davie – Magical Symbolism isbn
1898408076 August 2002
June 2002 Francis Newton Souza – Obituary, Guardian,
2005
· ‘The Year the Dictators Fell’
By Glyn Hughes - Etched Illustrations Goldmark Publications
· ‘Oliver Bancroft Painter’ Goldmark Publications catalogue
· ‘Woodcut Improvisations’ Alan Davie – Goldmark Publications
Catalogue
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