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Andy Cropper
Painter.
Andy is "a painter living in the wilds of Yorkshire (Sheffield, so not really 'wilds' as such)." He has been painting for 15 years, properly established in 2008.
"I am interested in serendipity - "happy accidents", "mini-sublimes" - and the emotions that come about from noticing them. Familiar examples might be a water droplet dribbling down the side of a glass, a speck of dust in a shaft of sunlight or a magnificent sunset over the brow of a hill.
It is not a case of something being beautiful or filled with huge momentous meaning, sometimes I will respond to something without truthfully knowing why. For some reason, at one moment of time, a thing has importance.
This may suggest photography as being a way to go, but I want to reconstruct the moment that's passed. I want to pay homage to it, actively deconstruct it, then reconstruct it, add myself to the mix as after all I am the person that had the moment and am choosing to portray it. Some of the photos I take, if enlarged, would become seriously uninteresting but by the action of painting, having made an image out of many marks, it gains a vibrancy, a texture, which is substantially different to a photograph even if the initial impression of my work is photographic.
As a painter I am unable to capture these moments immediately and photography can miss them or lose the emotional connection as it records the event. I use my camera as a sketchbook, to test, record and then expand on.
I'm not aiming to glamorise the mundane, but searching to find interest in the things around us that we usually ignore. There are fascinating things, often unobserved around each of us. I'm interested in those things that we miss, that we tend to use 'entertainment' to distract us from. I'm fascinated by the world around me not in an engaging way, but as an observer. I love watching the world go by. I am a voyeur." - Andy Cropper
Visit Cupola Gallery for more details or contact:
174-178a
Middlewood Road, Hillsborough, Sheffield,
S6 1TD
Tel. (0114) 285 2665
Opening Times Mon - Sat 10-6