[dropcap style=”font-size:100px;color:#992211;”]H[/dropcap]uxley-Parlour Gallery present Pathfinder, an exhibition of works by acclaimed Royal Academician, Basil Beattie. One of the most significant and singular abstract artists to emerge in post-war Britain, Beattie, influenced by abstract expressionism, brought the grandeur and scale of the New York School to London.
Dating from 1989 through to 2004, the works, including six large-scale paintings, chart the development of Beattie’s work throughout the 1990s. A defining era for the artist, this decade saw him abandon his purely formal approach and begin developing a new form of allusive abstraction based on pictorial symbolism, distinguishing himself from his contemporaries. The themes developed have come to define Beattie’s artistic output: of journeying through space, the passing of time and progress.
Ladders, tunnels, bridges and doorways thread themselves through Beattie’s later oeuvre. His interest in these signs lies with their multiplicity of meaning: that the words refer not only to architectural structures, but can also be used metaphorically to describe psychological and emotional states of being. A number of smaller works on paper will be on view, all of which make use of these complex architectural motifs, and are used to inform his larger works on canvas.
Pathfinder runs at Huxley-Parlour Gallery from 17 January – 15 February, in conjunction with Basil Beattie: Cause & Effect, on view at Hales Gallery from 24 January – 14 March
Naila Scargill is the publisher and editor of horror journal Exquisite Terror. Holding a broad editorial background, she has worked with an eclectic variety of content, ranging from film and the counterculture, to political news and finance.
