Andrew Hladky
(Nottingham & London Exhibitions)

Andrew Hladky is a Cambridge-based artist who graduated from Wimbledon School of Art with an MA Painting in 2003. Since then he has exhibited regularly in London galleries.

Andrew describes his painting technique as a 3-dimensional form of Pointillism. He constructs his paintings using cocktail sticks, dabbing small dots of oil paint in layer after layer. These slowly build into stalactite formations; delicate mineral crusts up to 4cm deep. From the side this highly textured surface causes the image to distort and break-down, dissolving into disorder.

Andrew paints images choked by their over-abundance, all sentiment and nostalgia defeated by blank, repetitive process. Sunsets multiply across the sky and horizons pile one on top of the other, creating inescapable, alien landscapes. Worms of paint squeezed straight from the tube populate the image, mingling with the figures and environment, threatening to over-run it entirely.

For the exhibition Andrew will be painting another triptych. In it the worms of paint mingle with painted figures to create a Bosch-like scene of worm-human hybrids. The worms of paint will start to spill off the painting, roving the walls, ceiling and floor, reforming occasionally into sculptural tableaux where delicate, multicolour trees grow and miniature figures pull themselves out of the paint.