Steve Cobb Acrylic Art Exhibition
August 14th, 2014 - Horsham, We
Steve Cobb Acrylic Art Exhibition
Horsham Museum and Art Gallery
Hurst Room
18th December 2013 - 25th January 2014
Photographer at the West Sussex County Times for over twenty eight years, Steve Cobb now brings his visual flair to an interpretation of the world using acrylic paint in a variety of stimulating ways.
Steve Cobb - Why I Paint
Known locally as a photographer for the West Sussex County Times based in Horsham, I've been with the paper for nearly thirty years.
Only recently have I indulged a long-held passion for painting. As a child I scribbled and sketched but have never really fully immersed myself in the creative waters. That is until about three years ago. I tried pastels, charcoal drawing, ink sketches but acrylics gave me the freedom to experiment in the direction I found most enjoyable.
The pictures displayed at Horsham Museum and Art Gallery in the Hurst Room represent a cross-section of my efforts in acrylic over the last three years.
I've tried different forms of expression, and when first starting a literal representation of what I saw was the ultimate goal. More recently I've tried a much looser approach. Afterall, as a photographer what use do I have for an accurate reproduction of a subject? I could photograph it and be done with it.
For me, I've come to appreciate the artist has to enter the process more explicitly. The picture must convey more than just a copy of any scene. I want my pictures to convey a mood, my emotional response to a subject. I want to enter the picture as 'artist' and transform the image into a feeling, a physical two-dimensional expression of how I respond to the subject.
Sometimes the picture is simply a delight in a particular colour. But isn't that just an expression of what I feel too?
Painting for me is about pleasure; an escape from tribulations in life. It is about he enjoyment of facing a blank white rectangle and beginning a journey. The process of painting is interactive and the paint can take me in directions I never intended at the outset. But that is indeed the pleasure: the journey. The freedom to take a chance and make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes lead to something so much better than I had ever intended.