Ned Campbell

One reason I paint is to figure something out. Sometimes I start by setting myself a formal problem to solve; sometimes I just paint what I see. Regardless of how I start, over time I see the qualities my paintings share.

They often combine flat graphic shapes with splashy, loose marks and fully rendered areas. Some make explicit the underlying geometry of a composition – its artificiality – others find subtle ways to draw it out. It’s a search for a natural organisation, a ‘rightness’, in the feeling of an image.

This formal investigation is balanced by my attempt to make an emotional connection with the subject – the rational and structured merged with the subjective and imaginative. It’s two ideas at once: knocking Neoclassicism and Romanticism together to see what comes out.