#1
#1
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"What leads me to painting is the experience of being alone. Of walking to places empty and less frequented. I live on the Thames Estuary, the place where the River Thames meets the North Sea. Exploring the liminal has always interested me. In London I used to walk its dark cobbled alleys ways or journey to a forgotten ruin on the outskirts. The seeking of refuge in the quiet and overlooked has always been the source that motivates the work.
This collection of images is from both real and imagined places. Whatever I paint I like to concentrate on a singular subject, to isolate it in darkness. Whether a house, a person or an animal, these characters face a quiet, unpopulated world. Created with a limited palette and tonal restraint, for me, they help us find our own quiet place of aloneness and solitude."
CHRISTOPHER GEE (b.1987) is a British artist from Portsmouth, England. He lives and works on the Thames Estuary, Essex. His small scale works on paper explore stillness and isolated scenes. His paintings are informed by historic houses and landmarks, often forgotten or overlooked sites of familiarity and intrigue. Walking and collecting are key to his practice. His graphic yet naïve-looking paintings, conjure places both historical and imagined, taking us on a fragmented journey through forested landscapes, vernacular architecture, and archaic towers. The intimacy and execution of these paintings convey themes of silence and solitude. His influences include Northern Renaissance painting, Folk Art, the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich and the paintings of Alfred Wallis. He also takes inspiration from the novels of Hermann Hesse and W.G. Sebald.
Gee has sold his work to clients such as Paul Smith and Liberty London as well as showing at Paris fashion week in 2019 in collaboration with menswear brand UNIFORME-Paris. His work is also held in private collections around the world. WEBSITE. INSTAGRAM.
(Image Credits (top down / L-R): Shell of a Georgian house, Birch trees at night, Portrait of Valerie, Whitby Abbey, Annika, Crow at Night, Cotswalds Cottage, Boy at Night, Portrait of Luna, Dark sea, Portrait of a Boy, Craythorne House, Estuary with distant lights, Comet at dusk, Black Labrador, Portrait of Ronnie, Whippet, Winterton on sea lighthouse, Reflection on a lake, Black church in the sea.