Graham Dean
Small Solace 2021 39x29cm watercolour on arches
Graham Dean is a painter of identity. For Graham, the body is a 'holding-pen of emotions'. His protagonists are the receptacles of these emotions and memories, witnesses of the human condition and the complex human interaction with the world. His painting essentially becomes an investigation of the surfaced and the subconscious.
Using what he refers to as reverse archaeology, Graham revitalises the traditional watercolour technique: contrasting layers of paint are applied sequentially on thick handmade Indian paper, each sheet undergoes a process of tearing and overlapping to create a final composition, and correlates to the multilayering of the epidermis shielding human body.