Doug Kemp

Available for sale from Big Sky Fine Art; this original oil painting by Doug Kemp, dating from March 1986.<br> The painting is presented and supplied in its’ original minimal frame. <br> <br> Doug Kemp is a contemporary artist who produces graphic bold and colourful works which reflect his passion for celebrating everyday life. He has featured an eclectic mix of subjects, including romance and sit-coms, and Chicago gangsters. <br> <br> Kemp was born in 1939, son of Frank and Violet Kemp. He graduated from Walthamstow College of Art in the 1960s with fellow artist and pop star to be Ian Drury and British film director Peter Greenaway. He then studied at the St. Martin’s School of Art 1978-82 and then completed a post graduate course at The Royal Academy Schools, London 1982-1985. He lectured at Loughborough College of Art, Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools until he moved to Suffolk in the 1990s. By this time, he had exhibited in a number of international exhibitions. He then retired from teaching and became a full time artist, working in his studio at The Old Forge, The Street, Chelsworth, Suffolk right into his seventies.<br> <br> Kemp says “I’m an Industrial City Painter, which used to be called a Modernist fifty years ago. I am a colour and line man who 'collects' anything seen or felt from his life span and of course the history of art. I have just as much love of 10th Century Romanesque wall painting as the golden age of comics, all line and colour people. Everything and everyone has influenced me, in particular Art Deco and Max Beckmann.” <br> <br> Kemp has produced work as acrylic painting on canvas, works on paper and linocuts. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1989. He has exhibited widely in the UK and in a number of well established galleries in the USA. In 2015 he exhibited paintings and prints from 1988-2015 in an exhibition entitled ‘A Very Small Retrospective” at Wingfield Barns. He also regularly exhibits with the Royal Academy.<br> <br> This original painting is a large bold piece, reminiscent of an American comic strip. The focus is on a beautiful red headed girl, wearing a blue blouse and holding a bunch of mixed flowers. She might be a film star. She holds her head up and leans in as if to receive a kiss on the lips. Behind her are the black and turquoise stripes of shutters or blinds, and the silhouette of a man in a hat leaning in to deliver the kiss. Whether he is real or imagined we cannot tell, but the image is an uplifting one. Around the main image is a double circular border, pretty pale blue with little pink flowers, like the border of a plate, perhaps suggesting an American diner, and beyond that is a blockwork of geometric shapes. The entire piece is very stylised.