Artist : Ian Everard
Title : Rough Stuff
Medium : found postcard (top) watercolour (bottom)
Dimensions : 20 x 25 cm


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Ian Everard’s artworks address a range of themes which uduslly evoke a scence of nostalgia as well as current concern. The subjects of his paintings are often found objects, which are exhibited alongside. He considers this search for subject / object to be a primary aspect to the making of his work. The objects are primarily books, photographs or ephemera which are repurposed to address the artists own preoccupations and concerns. Once the object becomes subject, he attempts to copy what he see’s, usually in watercolour, in exact scale and detail, with all the visible wear and tear, right down to each blemish or crease. The paintings are seldom finished, but are eventually considered ‘complete’. This produces a sort of visual rhetoric, with the painting, in effect, interrogating its subject. The process involves close observation, pattern recognition and inquiry. Everard aims to present the real but also evoke the imaginary. Ultimately, these artworks, which present a mise en scene, result in a mise en abyme, where meaning shifts between fact and fiction, imagination and reality. He is interested in the associative states of mind these objects, copies and pictures evoke, such as displacement and haunting, daydreaming and remembering. For Everard, the studio space or exhibition space is a means of imaginary transportation to both somewhere and elsewhere.

Ian Everard is a British artist, born in St. Ives, Cornwall and living in Santa Cruz, California, USA, since the 1980s. He studied at Stourbridge College, the University of California and San Francisco State University. His work has been displayed at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in San Jose, Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Los Angeles, Mirage Gallery in Tokyo, and most recently at Jack Fischer Gallery and the De Young Museum, in San Francisco. He is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery, in San Francisco. His work is in collections worldwide.