Alan Salisbury
Profile/CV
Alan Salisbury was born in Preston, Lancashire and studied painting at Manchester and Liverpool Colleges of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. He has lived in Wales since 1974 working at the University of Glamorgan where he was Principal Lecturer in Painting and Field Leader in Arts and Media. He has now left to concentrate on his own artistic practice although he maintains contact with the University as an External Fellow. He has exhibited widely throughout the UK, Europe, USA and South Korea. In 2005 he was awarded Joint First Prize in the Liverpool School of Art Alumni Open Competition. In 2008 he was awarded First Prize (£15.000) in the Wales Portrait Award 2 Competition
A painter who works within the conventions of narrative representation his work is filled with witty and playful references to art of the past. However, it is the 17th century to which his most recent attention is focussed. Still Life or Nature Mort is always about more than bowls of fruit and flowers. Allegories are rampant. The subtext of sensuality and sexuality withheld beneath the surface in the puritanical era of 17th century Northern Europe is brought playfully forward as fruit morphs into body parts mostly female. The puritanical messages about the dangers of earthly pleasures are ironically highlighted as ‘real’ flies and wasps, adhered to the surface, literally gnaw away at the painted illusions. In recent work the brash iconography of ‘Pop Art’ infiltrates the quiet restraint as cartoon strip characters indulge in a critical discourse with the artist and the work in which they are depicted
Website www.alansalisbury.com
