Paul Rossi

Circus Nativity: Contemporary Figurative Oil Painting

2018

I work in oils, goauche, charcoal, pencil, pen and ink, and less frequently, in acrylic and watercolour. My work takes a figurative approach to space and tends to revolve around the exploration of the Western pictorial tradition, most particularly, the painters of early modernism, especially Picasso, and the Italian Metaphysical school of approximately the same years, represented by Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carra. I feel that the themes and preoccupations which inform the lives and works of these artists has much to say to us in the early 21st century. They were acutely conscious of the character of the emerging 20th century world, but they also had a deep and lively awareness of the perennial value of the Classical and Mediterranean worlds. They experienced and thought about this world as a spiritual condition, and as an abiding presence in Western consciousness. My own work tries to reflect in some way this sense of the need for engagement both with tradition, the past – and with the present moment.