Richard Friend

After spending ten minutes spluttering and trying to come up with convincing art-speak to justify my degree show the rather lovely sculpture tutor from the RCA who had been given the task of assessing me said "Richard, calm down, calm down (brave words seeing as though we were in Liverpool) It's OK, everything is fine. It's OK to make beautiful things. The world needs beautiful things."
At that point all thoughts of social and political references flew out of the window and gusted down Hope Street. That man set me free. I wish I had met him on my first day, not my last. I wonder what his name was.
I have always been reasonably confident about drawing but once at college the introduction of colour caused me great excitement if not a little unease. Initially I found myself producing increasingly more vast and complicated canvases covered in coloured squares and rectangles. This was my answer to the problem of colour. This being; how does one place colours next to, or on top of other colours while still retaining their integrity? I found that the only way that I could comfortably paint in colour was to establish a hard line between each block of colour. I found that different colours had their own energy and would appear to sink b...

Kent Institute of Art and Design Btec National Diploma Foundation Studies
Awarded The Eric Hurren Prize.
Liverpool Art School B.A (Hons) Fine Art (Painting)
Member of The Association Of British Naive Artists (ABNA)

Solo Exhibitions

'Coastlines' Phoenix, London UK
‘Train of Thought’, The New Arts Centre, Chatham, Kent, UK
‘ Dog Days’ Pundole Gallery, Canterbury UK
Dolphin Gallery, Upnor, Kent
‘Caked In’, Café Gloriette, Knightsbridge, London
Fisherton Mill Salisbury Wiltshire UK December
‘Gone Fishing’ The Deaf Cat Gallery Rochester Kent November


Group Exhibitions

Deal Library , Deal, Kent. UK.
The Station Gallery, Deal, Kent.UK.
Omphalos Arts, Sandwich, Kent.UK
Market Street Gallery, Sandwich, Kent.UK
The Nevill Gallery, Canterbury, Kent.UK
MEDLAB l2th IFCC European Congress of Clinical Chemistry, Basle, Switzerland.
'Young and Promising' Will's Art Warehouse, Parsons Green, London.
'Heffers' Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. UK
'Starter' La Maison London UK
'Stretchers' Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London UK
'2000 minus 1' Hortensia Art Gallery, Kensington and Chelsea College, London UK
SLATE Exhibition, Sandwich, Kent, UK
Teddington Art Fair, Landmark Centre, London, UK
Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, London, UK,
‘Half a Mile of Paintings’ Sheffield, UK
Medway Art Festival, Rochester, UK
Dolphin Gallery, Upnor Kent UK July
Brighton Art Fair
Art Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
The Great Christmas Art...