Graeme Welch

Graeme Welch is an artist who creates works that are intense and and luminous scenarios that attract and entice the viewer into complex and allegorical portrayals of the human condition. Vibrating with an intense energy, familiar places and events are subtly twisted into disturbing images that probe deeply into an illusory world in which meanings fragment and coalesce, intensify and fade in a kaleidoscopic vision of mystery and fascination. Familiar faces and events, locations and objects, merge into a fantasy that may equally draws inspiration from the movies, poetry or myths. Humour, nostalgia and touches of eroticism are manipulated to entice the viewer into a disturbing contemplation of their own memories and desires.

Graeme Welch was born in New Zealand, the son of a cartoonist and commercial illustrator. Surrounded by the caricatures of world war personalities and designs for cinema dioramas in his father’ studio, and with a talent and imagination fueled by illustrations in ‘Saturday Evening Post’ he seemed to be pre-destined toward a career in the arts. But it was not to be; suspending artistic ambition, he switched to science and, eventually, to immigrate to Canada as a graduate student in Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Despite the inevitable demands of a career as a teacher and educational administrator, he has continued to paint and actively exhibit. He completed a degree in Bachelor of Fine Art degree (with distinction) at Concordia University in 1985.