www.geoffreykey.com
Artist Geoffrey Key official website
WWW.GEOFFREYKEY.COM
British Painter & Sculptor
ARTIST GEOFFREY KEY
Geoffrey Key is widely considered to be one of the UK’s most important contemporary artists. His strong, dynamic figures and dreamlike compositions have earned him many admirers. As a result, his paintings can be found in galleries and collections around the world.
Key was elected to membership of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts in 1968 and went on to become a prize winner in 1971. His career as an artist now spans six decades.
Key Decades – Exhibition, Book and Film.
14th May – 14th June 2022
63 Geoffrey Key pieces will be shown as part of the Cheshire Art Gallery – Decades Exhibition. Accompanying Book by Nick Brown OBE FRSA & Short Film by Director and Cinematographer Gaius Brown.
As one of Britain’s most popular and distinctive artists, Geoffrey has gone to extreme lengths to cultivate this individual style and has in his recent series ‘Isolated Heads’ painted perhaps the most intensely observed and sensitive psychological record of the pandemic.
Over sixty three years as a professional artist, through a combination of technique, tone and colour Geoffrey Key has produced a body of work that, whilst highly original, creates a feeling of deep joy and timeless quality.
Cheshire Art Gallery are proud to present ‘Key Decades’ Exhibition, the first full retrospective. This major exhibition, which has taken more than three years to curate has uncovered many important works several of which were believed lost. The result is a sensuous taste of Key’s artistic journey that will not only delight but also challenge the orthodox view of Key’s progress as an artist. It will also surprise even his most knowledgeable and avid admirers.
Cheshire Art Gallery: 13 Ack Lane East, Bramhall, Stockport, SK7 2BE.
Click here: to read the full exhibition details
NEW Key Decades
by author Nick Brown OBE
Published: 6th May 2022
• 172 pages – hardback
• Fully illustrated
• Limited to only 500 copies
• Hand signed by Geoffrey Key
The ‘Key Decades’ book is the first full retrospective, enabling a comprehensive appreciation of the most arresting aspects of Geoffrey Key’s artistic journey: The continuous development of his distinctive style through line, tone and colour, his interpretation of a particular subject, a single topic which he paints in series, and his constant circling back to re-invent previous themes. However, ‘caveat emptor’, the journey is far from over.
Key Decades – Life & Art of Geoffrey Key
Geoffrey Key visits his inspirational Whiteley Nab hill as part of a feature documentary written and directed by Gaius Brown & Nick Brown.
Geoffrey Key:
The great artist in his studio putting the finishing touches to another masterpiece.
ISOLATED HEADS BOOK
In the first fourteen weeks of the coronavirus lockdown, Geoffrey Key painted thirty heads. His exploration of isolation considers the affects of being totally alone, capturing private moments of desperation.
This extraordinary series of paintings is a lasting record of what we all went through, distilled on thirty faces that represent so many more.
Art with Heart
In the first fourteen weeks of the coronavirus lockdown, Geoffrey Key painted thirty heads. His exploration of isolation considers the effects of being totally alone, capturing private moments of desperation.
Striking, Surreal Compositions
Geoffrey Key is best known for his bold use of colour, fine draughtsmanship and strong imagination. His masterly use of form, texture, light and colour brings distinctive character to his artworks.
Movement and rhythm, space and depth, growth and structure, harmony and contrast, noise and calm… his paintings reverberate with these qualities.
Featured artworks
Infinite Jest: Oil on canvas 2014
Horses and riders: Oil on canvas 1994
Subjects that Inspire
“My work has been like one long chain of progression. I latch on to one theme and that decides what the next series will be and then I shoot off on another tangent. Since leaving college, that has not stopped.”
No particular individual element inspires Geoffrey Key’s choice of subject matter. With this is mind, he instead likes finding and exploring new and different aspects of whatever he is painting. However, there have been certain subjects he returns to regularly, and he is perhaps best known for his popular clowns and horses, both powerful images.
His interest in clowns stems, ironically, from a childhood fear of them. It should perhaps be said that he has now explored them so often and so effectively in his work that this fear must surely have been well and truly exorcised.
Geoffrey Key’s interest in the colour, lines and movement of performance is also shown in his paintings of dancers, jesters and musicians. It has led to a series of works featuring the Commedia dell’arte, of which he says, “I realised Commedia dell’arte epitomised everything I had done in the past.”
This is covered in the book Infinite Jest.
Infinite Jest: Artist Geoffrey Key
"It’s fair to say that, from our experience, if a Key doesn’t stop you in your tracks
then nothing will, and you will be missing a big slice of life.”
Christopher Underwood, gallery owner
Geoffrey Key’s work opens the eyes of the observer and takes them to a place beyond the literal world around them. Through his work, they see a back-lit cloud, a millstone grit escarpment, a jester or a horse in a new light, brought to life in his studio. And just as he brings a new experience to anyone who looks at his paintings or sculpture, he is also always gathering experiences to inspire his work – a night out in a restaurant or a trip overseas burns raw images into his memory, to be accessed and used as needed.
European Modernism
Geoffrey Key’s paintings are heavily influenced by the school of European Modernism. This was an influential art movement and philosophy that grew out of the wide scale and far-reaching changes in Western society that took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Modernist art encompasses many styles, but all are conform to certain underlying principles: a rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of subjects); innovation and experimentation with form (the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes.
Geoffrey's work has given me so much pleasure over the years. The best thing is that feeling in your stomach when you see another new painting and you know, no matter how much money you have in your account, it's coming home. You don't often get that feeling, but when you do, you know. Martin Heaps: Collect Art Gallery
Xanthos sculptor: Bronze 1980
Torso: Aluminium 1985
Woman with bird: Bronze 1978