Gordian Knot Painting

Andrew Tyler is an artist and singer/songwriter born in Pershore. (1959). His award- winning, yet uncompromising graphic style explores the human condition; its transience, its beauty, its darkness and light. Andrew Tyler has built up a vast vocabulary of images. There is always a strong allegorical situation going on, in his pictures, an array of objects, sometimes discordant, placed in the image for what ever Andrew Tyler thought pertinent, maybe for his own pleasure. He seems also inspired by placing shadows, think of Italian surrealist De Chirico, who also painted the bizarre, but whose paintings were far more sparten compared to the richness and visual congestion of Andrew Tyler’s work. Also we might think of Paula Rego, or perhaps a Tim Burton film or the crazy world of Terry Gilliam. Andrew Tyler summons up his own quirky surreal world. Even the titles of his works give a lot away about his mind “clean up in dodge city” “man overboard (he likes “nautical images”) “Rocket in a bucket” (a surrealist joke, the kind Magritte might have told) 'Fantascape No1' which has a cartoonist quality to it, a lush green landscape, with a train track running through and cows scattered about. “Swords at dawn" more imagery of weaponry, mixed in with a few incongruous objects, he likes to include workman’s tools in his work. Tracks and trains seem to feature regularly in this De Chiricoesque environment. Sometimes there is a “pop art” feel to the work, for example his image “pistol and purse”. There is definitely the sense looking at his images that you are embroiled in some bizarre film, like Gilliam’s “Brazil” or perhaps a Kathkaesque story which has been visualized.