Often drawing upon his own personal memories Jonathan Purday’s use of photography and film stills is carried forward into his practice. His paintings display the artist’s core aesthetics bringing together a selection of colours that are exploited by the often harsh dark void that confronts them. Memory and its waywardness becomes the real subject of these pieces, as the artist often works not from the image but his recollection of it. Consequently, compositional organisation and detail often become ‘lost in translation.’

Previous works have taken scenes of struggle and conflict, creating gentle pyrotechnics, turning the blockbuster films of violence and confrontation…

Often drawing upon his own personal memories Jonathan Purday’s use of photography and film stills is carried forward into his practice. His paintings display the artist’s core aesthetics bringing together a selection of colours that are exploited by the often harsh dark void that confronts them. Memory and its waywardness becomes the real subject of these pieces, as the artist often works not from the image but his recollection of it. Consequently, compositional organisation and detail often become ‘lost in translation.’

Previous works have taken scenes of struggle and conflict, creating gentle pyrotechnics, turning the blockbuster films of violence and confrontation into soft-edged explosions, pastel-coloured atrocities as soothing to the eye as a Matisse. In his more recent work Purday draws on basic desires and illusions of both past, present and future with its twisted existence and often unexpected reality, addressing both urban and rural environments.

There is a sense of alienation in these often uninhabited landscapes, each of which point towards a society lacking in substance at which its centre, once religion, is replaced by the state of play found in sport and the fantasy away from the constant flux of the cities in the countryside but which have however become highlighted by the natural disasters that it increasingly witnesses. The basic want of love is also excluded from Purdays’ work where what seems like such concentrated material keeps breeding itself, feeding the gap.

Since finishing his Fine Art degree at Bath in 1994, Purday has exhibited widely, including a number of solo shows in London.

Purday’s ‘Skewed Surveillance’ was featured on a Gomez album cover, released March 2002, and other works, such as ‘Celestial Dusk’ have been used on posters and other merchandise for the band.