We are delighted to announce Tim Braden’s third solo exhibition with Frestonian Gallery, opening 21stSeptember 2023.
‘La Coloriste’ comprises an extraordinary body of paintings, largely produced over the past 18 months. The principal subject of these radiant and boldly realised paintings is the city and surrounding area of Tangier, Morocco, in particular the villa and gardens of Franco-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada. The gardens planted by Barrada are arranged around the creation of natural pigments for dyes. Using his typically deft command of colour and composition, Braden here completes a virtuous circle of creativity, transposing this garden dedicated to the production of colour into a series of kaleidoscopic paintings of semi-abstracted and dynamic forms.
Concluding his excellent new essay on the series, the writer and critic Tom Marks writes...
‘Imagination,’ Paul Bowles wrote, ‘is essential for the enjoyment of a place like Tangier, where the details that meet the eye are not what they seem’. That feels a fitting way to conceive of Tim Braden’s approach to the garden at Villa Jalobey. In these paintings, imagination supersedes perception – arriving at a vision that is true to both the painter and the place.
