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Peter Welford was born in London in 1964. He studied History of Art and Conservation at the universities of Manchester and London (Courtauld Institute of Art). He continued at the Courtauld as lecturer before spending eight years as an architectural historian and historic buildings consultant. Throughout this time however, he divided his focus between his architectural work and his painting. In 2000, he gave up his architectural consultancies to paint full-time.
In 1994 he and his wife bought the semi-derelict Gwydir Castle in the foothills of Snowdonia, North Wales. Over the last thirteen years they have been restoring the historic castle and its important early gardens. The story of the restoration - culminating in the repatriation of the famous 17th-century Dining Room panelling from the New York Metropolitan Museum - was told in his wife’s acclaimed book `Castles in the Air’ (Ebury Press), published in 2004. Welford works from his studio at the top of the late 15th-century Solar Tower.
Over the past two decades he has made a careful study of the traditional workshop practices of Old Master painting, in particular those of the early Flemish and German schools. As a consequence, he has acquired a detailed knowledge of the technical mysteries of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Northern Renaissance painting, a technical vocabulary long forgotten. His interest in technique is, however, not born out of nostalgia; nor is he concerned with imitating past styles. Instead, he use this technical language - with its extraordinary aesthetic possibilities - to express his view of contemporary reality: the world he observes around him, and to which he belongs.
Peter Welford intends his art to be seen as a mirror. If its reflection is not always palatable, so be it. These paintings are not comforting salon pictures, but rather meant as a form of journalism. Their themes are provocative and sometimes political, not soliloquies but dialogues with the viewer. The allegorical nature of many of the subjects, and the veiled symbolism which lies within each painting, makes that dialogue the more rewarding. The more one looks, the more one finds.
Peter Welford by Simon Jenkins
Welford’s technique is miniaturist and layered. Frustrated by the limitation of abstractionism and the stagnation of much contemporary art, he has revived the technique of the early renaissance Flemish and German schools, of which he has made a meticulous study. The extraordinary technical possibilities of this demanding medium – oil and egg tempera on panel, built up painstakingly in layers – produces a finely-finished surface where brushstrokes are eliminated and colours achieve a glowing inner depth.
Although Welford paintings are representational, he protests that his art is not realism. Rather, he constructs a parallel, dream-like world from taken nature, forming a collage of the components of observed reality. He thus creates a virtual world in which his allegories and commentaries are those of idealised beauty, yet charged with psychological tensions. The harmony of colouring and a seductive technical finish are designed to counter the unsettling subject matter. Traditional and even biblical themes are addressed anew to examine their relevance to a world of material dependence and spiritual confusion.
Peter Welford lives and works at beautiful Gwydir Castle in North Wales. His studio is at the top of the late-fifteenth century Solar Tower. `Unstill Lives’ is his second solo show.
Simon Jenkins
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