165. Gordon Close - Figure, Cat and Sculpture

2026
Ink and Acrylic on board
17 x 17 x 0.6 cm
Signed on Verso

The drawings and paintings of Gordon Close are mixed-media works combining acrylic, oil, and ink. His practice draws on the domestic and everyday alongside personal and collective histories, folklore, and myth, creating narratives that inhabit familiar yet timeless interiors and landscapes.

Close’s imagery often carries a quiet theatricality, where ordinary objects and settings become charged with symbolic or psychological resonance. References to his earlier sculptural and three-dimensional practice recur throughout the compositions, giving the works a strong sense of structure, spatial awareness, and material presence. Through layered surfaces and shifting narrative fragments, the paintings move fluidly between memory, imagination, and observation.

He completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Art at Sunderland Polytechnic College of Art & Design (1978–1982).

Selected exhibitions include Evolving at Shaftesbury Arts Centre, Shaftesbury (2025); exhibitions at Shaftesbury Arts Centre (2023); the RBA Open at Mall Galleries, London (2017–2023); exhibitions at The Old School Gallery, Alnmouth (2021); Original Print Show at Zillah Bell Gallery, Thirsk (2015); the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, London (2015); New Work at Haslams of Hallgate, Hexham (2011); Sculptors in Two Dimensions at Sally Hunter Fine Art, London (2003); Scenes Unseen at The Gallery, Gateshead Library (2001); Recent Work at Clayton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (1998); Working in Two Dimensions at Sally Hunter Fine Art, London (1997); Moving Figures at Queen’s Hall Art Centre, Hexham (1994); Sculpture Week at Whitechapel Gallery and Broadgate Arena, London (1989); Heads and Figures at Anderson O’Day Gallery, London (1987); Bretton Menagerie at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1986); Attitudes 84 at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1984); Coleridge – Poet and Explorer at the Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere (1984); and exhibitions at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth (1983).

Awards include the Northern Arts Award (1983 and 1986) and The Backhouse Prize for Drawing at Sunderland Polytechnic College of Art & Design (1982). His work is held in collections including Northern Arts, Newcastle upon Tyne, and the Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere.