Welcome
Bryan Pickard is an artist based in Shaftesbury, North Dorset. His paintings have been exhibited at shows put on by both the top national societies for watercolours, the RI at the Mall Galleries and the Royal Watercolour Society at Bankside, London, next to Tate Modern.
He paints atmospheric farming scenes, figures, children, boats, marine subjects and landscapes, and is gradually moving to a looser style. He gets enormous pleasure from the paintings of Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Harry Becker, Jack Yeats, Joaquin Sorolla, Roland Batchelor, and recently William Selwyn.
Extract from a 2008 DORSET MAGAZINE (www.dorsetmagazine.co.uk) illustrated article by Stephen Swann (a watercolour expert who has twice served on Antiques Roadshow):
“ Take one of Bryan Pickard’s most recent paintings. It shows a local farmer moving his herd of cows down a lane. The paint has been applied in full-blooded washes in wonderfully confident films of flowing colour. The painting is an exhilarating exercise in what watercolour can be made to do in the hands of someone who is not afraid to really go for it. It speaks of a keen delight in things seen, yet it is very far from the slavish replication of the forms of the physical world. Detail and tightness have been left behind and instead what we have is a kind of visual poetry….”
From the official Dorset Art Weeks brochure, 2008:
“WITH SO MANY VENUES TO CHOOSE FROM DORSET ART WEEKS ASKED FIONA ROBINSON, ARTIST AND AUTHOR OF “FIFTY WESSEX ARTISTS” (Evolver Press 2006), TO SUGGEST SOME VENUES WHICH VISITORS MIGHT LIKE TO USE AS A STARTING POINT FROM WHICH TO PLAN THEIR ITINERARIES”
Her choices included Bryan Pickard: “….colour is an important element of Bryan Pickard’s figurative paintings whose subjects range from atmospheric sea and landscapes to farm scenes. He works in watercolour, handling this difficult medium fluidly. His complex compositions are often nostalgic, positioning carefully observed groups of figures or animals with old farm machinery or steam engines. He increasingly finds himself recording vanishing rural practices like horse fairs or cattle markets…".
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