Bob Aldous British, b. 1960
The experimental painting techniques on silk gives the paintings by Bob Aldous a unique quality. The translucent property of watercolour and ink lend itself to a symbolic depiction of water. Aldous continues to return to an early fascination with the flow of water and its relationship with perception and emotion.
There are many artists from the canon of art history that Bob Aldous eloquently cites in relation to his work. Some are influences, other artists mirror his own psyche and preoccupations. Tiepolo and Turner, Tapies and Tillyer all hold sway but lets look at the intrinsic nature of the paintings, performance and poetry of the man himself.
Air and water – breathing through water – walking on air. The elements earth and fire are nowhere to be seen in his large silk paintings. The quality of lightness, as in ‘ lightness of being’ is clearly not thinness. Bobs paintings flow with a deceptive ease of making which is far removed from the vague mark-making of a ‘thin’ painter.
The Chinese and Tibetans have been painting on silk for a thousand years. Silk cloth naturally absorbs infinite hues and gradient washes therefore it is the perfect medium for Bobs romantic vision of the world. The paintings draw us into the milky scape-lands of the imagination – an arcadian idyll, or the legendary lands of Shangri-La (Tibet) and Cornwall’s Lyonesse – whatever these works suggest, essentially they are places for reverie.