Richard Heys

Richard Heys was born in West Yorkshire and grew up on a hill farm in the Pennines. He had an imaginative and artistic mother, who ensouled the landscape with wonderful fables and local place names. He remembers running after his father’s red tractor as he turned the grass, picnics among the bales of hay, bringing the sheep down off the moor and driving the cattle from field to field. To this day, nature and landscape are important touchstones in his work – there is a specific geography to every painting. 

Richard’s studio is based at Emerson College in the Sussex countryside. Often he hears the buzzards calling. He searches them out and looks across the valley to the Ashdown Forest and appreciates the folding landscape around him. In Richard’s current working practice he creates many over lapping layers and textures of paint. The colour breaks in a certain way which may give the impression of the surface of water, the texture of bark or a sense of a map, an unfolding landscape which one traverses.

In the preface to her ‘Forms of Enchantment’ Marina Warner reflects on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology. This has left a deepening impression on Richard, enabling him to catch hold of inner activity, of the ‘combinatory imagination’ of artists. Warner writes; “When making something, memories, empirical observation and make-believe continually overlap and interact.” Richard creates a sense of time in his painting with multi-layered textures, transparencies and rich patinas. He says; “In the active contemplation of a painting I evoke the spirit of place in my work.”