Vans brings together the work of Shaun Morris and Paul Newman, featuring the van as both a personal and social symbol. Influenced by the traditions of landscape painting and the realities of contemporary urban life, their paintings explore memory, work, consumption, and change in modern Britain.
Shaun’s paintings examine the van as a defining feature of the contemporary landscape. Through close observation, he transforms these overlooked vehicles into symbols of labour, consumption, and economic growth. His work explores how vans reflect the pressures of modern life, inviting reflection on work, value, sustainability, and society.
Paul’s work draws on childhood memories, Romantic landscape painting, and popular culture. A chance encounter with a Ford Escort van, echoing memories of his father’s weekly return home, inspired a recurring motif. Alongside Gothic figures, these images explore memory, change, decay, and uncertainty in a shifting world.
‘Canals & Bridges’ at the Showcase Gallery, Jubilee Trade Centre, Birmingham 130 Pershore St B5 6ND.
A new reiteration of Paul Newman’s Urban Gothic paintings, featuring works based on an urban walk along the canal under M5 near Smethwick in 2016. This series incorporates elements from 18th -19th c paintings, including; Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831 & Jean-Antione Watteau’s The Embarkation for Cythera 1717.
Paul Newman’s Urban Gothic paintings weave together a tableau of motifs including; 18th & 19th-century landscape paintings with 20th century industry, architecture and cinematic monsters like Frankenstein’s, and the human Fly.
The imagery also draws from memories and experiences throughout the artists life; his father’s Ford Escort van, the museum experience of Romantic era landscape paintings. The work explores themes around relics of heritage, ruin and decay. The characters in the work journey through dreamlike landscapes which are on the periphery change and transformation.
Paul Newman is an artist based in Birmingham. Recent exhibitions in 2023 include ‘Worlds Away; Art & Nature ‘ at mac Birmingham and ‘In Ruin’ a solo exhibition as part of Soup VI artist in residence program at Stryx.
Paul Newman
English Gothic revisited.
Paintings 2017-2022
Friday 3rd February 2023.
The Showcase Gallery, Ground Floor, The Jubilee Trade Centre,130 Pershore Street, Birmingham B5 6ND
Closing event with the artist Paul Newman
phnewman73@hotmail.com
07766187030
The works combine motifs and reference points from 18th & 19th-century landscape painting with 20th-century industry, architecture and Gothic horror. These references create a tableau, the figurative elements become props in a stage set, a landscape in flux.
The imagery is heavily biographical drawing from various memories throughout the artists life; his fathers white Ford Escort van, Romantic era landscape painting in the National Gallery and urban and rural walks. The work explores political and cultural themes around relics of heritage and the urban/rural environment.
@paulhnewman
paul-newman.net