This week’s featured artist is Stephen Farley, an abstract painter from the UK whose work emphasizes the tactile experience of art just as much as the visual experience.
The photograph above shows a close-up of some of the texture he includes in his work, and there are more close-up images on Stephen’s portfolio website as well.
Stephen is really something of an experimental artist, using resin rather than traditional media to create those extremely textural surfaces of his paintings. The texture isn’t just an artistic whim, however; he has a specific reason for wanting people to touch, as well as look at, his art—you see, his own vision is impaired.
And for Stephen Farley, creating physical, touchable artwork is a way of both broadening his own artistic horizons as well as giving others insight into his uniquely limited visual experiences.
As I was looking through his paintings online, I was impressed by the irony of the situation. . . Stephen may not be able to see his artwork as well as you or I can, and yet being here in the States I can’t fully experience his artwork like he can, as he meant for them to be, by touch!
Here’s one of my favorite works, entitled Candy Says.
I often see abstract art that fails to find the right balance of positive and negative space, but I think Stephen’s hit this one out of the park with a good visual mix of both the white ground and the bold color on top.
That green area down in the bottom left is especially fantastic, giving just enough color relief from the reds and oranges to keep you coming back for more.
I only wish I could touch it in person to get the full experience.
The one criticism I would give isn’t directed towards Stephen’s art, but to his artist statement on his website—it seemed unnecessarily confusing, which is something that I’ve talked about before on EmptyEasel and feel strongly about.
For art to be accessible to everyone, artist statements should be written for everyone, in normal, everyday English without long, “intellectualized” words.
And really, with such unique and interesting artwork as this, viewers will already be impressed.
To see more of Stephen Farley’s textural paintings, head on over to his website and choose either the html or flash version; or jump straight to his gallery of work.