My Beautiful Flower

Seascape

Anthony Holden

Falmouth School of Art
Foundation and BA Hons Fine Arts Course 1991-96

Member, Bath Society of Artists

Exhibitor with Bear Flat Artists, Bath

I am particularly fortunate in living and working in Bath with its thriving creative culture and different artists' groups.

When I was a student at Falmouth Art College I came across some artists of the Cobra Group (named after the cities where its principal artists were based, Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam).  The paintings were vibrant, chaotic, colourful and quite wonderful.

I did not, then or now, wish to follow any particular group or idea: I was intrigued by them and their capacity to challenge the conventional view of what art is.

They appeared to have solved for themselves one of the key questions of painting: abstraction or figuration.  They freed themselves of it by painting images that were both abstract and figurative, believing in instinct over reason, using the free expressions of their unconscious: demonstrating that energy and spontaneity were more important than rationality and design.

Maybe a trace of these ideas are evidenced in the paintings shown here in my gallery. 
I hope so.

Anthony Holden
Bath
England