About Denholm Berry
I am a British artist currently living near Milan, Italy. My interests lie in wielding a contemporary spin on the traditions of figurative painting and portraiture. I create unconventional faceless portraits and transform sitters with shrouding gestures. My hope is that, by filtering concepts in this way, the act of obscuring becomes paradoxically revealing. That the shrouding gestures communicate something which transcends standard representation.
I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by the sea on the Isle of Wight in the south of England. I was always excited when a cool, dense column of sea fog would roll in and awestruck by its ability to dramatically change the light, mood and atmosphere of a place; shrouding the visible to create a waking dreamland. I mention this because a fog of sorts appears to have meandered into my work during the past two years. This was not a conscious decision, more of a chance encounter and one which, upon reflection, has to have stemmed from somewhere deep in my psyche.
After commencing my artistic practice in an official capacity more than seven years ago, my efforts concerning the human form have been focused on obscuring, blocking out or replacing the head and in particular the face, often rendering it featureless. Painterly gesture is my current mode of choice for this part of the process. I find the interplay between bold and delicate gestures interesting, as it tends to communicate a multitude of sensations in a fraction of a second. My preoccupation/obsession with masking has yielded some intriguing results.
I think that ultimately, through my work, I am striving to convey a state or feeling somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. A kind of mysterious sleepwalk where abstract notions emerge from the mist of my subconscious and become inextricably entwined with the human form. Where psychological spaces are overlaid and blended with physical ones.
My paintings and collages have been selected for many featured collections on Saatchi Art - appear in numerous reputable publications worldwide - have garnered significant attention from international galleries and curators on major art promoting platforms, which boast millions of followers collectively - are held in private collections across the UK, Italy, Australia, The Middle East, South America and are collected extensively in the USA - and my painting '#' features on the debut album cover of the hugely popular rock band 'Ego Kill Talent.'
