Hugh Fleetwood's art is paradoxical: both consoling and disturbing. It consoles, since it is clearly within the great tradition of Western European painting, with a harmony of form and use of colour that any admirer of that tradition might recognize. It disturbs, since for all its surface beauty, its subject matter tends to subvert the very idea of beauty; to suggest horror, discord and a world at odds with itself, and with its own traditions.
It is this combination of Beauty and the Beast that gives the work its power; and ensures that while it is never likely to be "fashionable", it is equally likely never to pass out of fashion. An art of then and now; and an art for now - and then.
It is this combination of Beauty and the Beast that gives the work its power; and ensures that while it is never likely to be "fashionable", it is equally likely never to pass out of fashion. An art of then and now; and an art for now - and then.
"He has located a territory of his own... a state of hard-won calm continually bordering calamity"
(The Times, London)
"The master of modern horror."
(The Sunday Times, London)
(The Times, London)
"The master of modern horror."
(The Sunday Times, London)