Julian Sharples

Painter based in Peckham.

Inspired by science and literature as well as graffiti observed whilst running along the London canals.

The motifs include fluids and gas-like forms indicating life and its creation through energy flows and chance. The spaceship motifs reflect the artist's interest in science and science fiction offering an alternative creation myth for life. Formally, the artist often depicts illusionary ruptures of the canvas with a spacecraft or machinary bursting through, suggesting that art exists in a world with many interweaving concerns.

The artist likes to organise the composition from memory and the paintings are often partly erased as they deviate from a preferred mental image. The paintings look as though they are copied from a reference image but this image simply exists in the artist's mind's eye.

The artist's interest in classical literature has led him to explore visual tropes such as exaggeration, closely linked to the literary ones of hyperbole and metaphor. He has composed several series of paintings that explore such literary tropes, whilst searching for their visual equivalent in paint.

Goldsmiths MA fine art 1995-6
St Martins BA (1st) fine art 1992-5
Birkbeck College MA philosophy 2008-10
Hertford College, Oxford University BA (2:1) Science of Materials 1986-1990

2025 Royal Academy Summer Show "Plugs"
2024 Double Vision, two person show at Tension Fine Art
2019 Cell Graffiti, solo show at Tension Fine Art
2017 Royal Academy Summer Show "Psychic Space"
2011 Creekside Open
2010 Royal Academy Summer Show