Gallery

OUTSIDE/IN

1 - 29 May 2021

My work starts with a real event or situation and often through several versions of paintings, it moves from being more directly representational to a much more constructed composition. It is a process of stripping out the inessential and expanding on the more painterly and symbolic elements. 

These paintings are largely painted during lockdown, so there’s a lot of latent energy and emotion. I was drawn to painting things shrouded in dust sheets as a symbol of life in stasis but as it is beginning to feel like we’re coming out into a spring time so there is quite a lot of colour  and optimism showing through the drab.  

My work is diaristic because I’ve found that the paintings come out better that way, if I have direct knowledge of the subject and emotional interest. The trouble has been what do you paint when you’re not able to go out much. The work has been focussed inward for a year but there’s plenty to look at and analyse. The best thing about it has been the ability to examine these spaces as psychologically loaded.

George Young grew up in Durweston, Dorset and now lives in London. Since his MA at the Royal College of Art, Young has showed in London, New York, Los Angeles, Brussels and Stockholm as well as five previous solo exhibitions at the Art Stable.