Map

Beans

Bunker Project

Salcombe

Grill

Nice Walk

Kindergarten

Ian Carr studied Fine Art at Leeds College of Art during its heady avant garde days of the sixties and then the University of Manchester. Most of his working life has been in art education in the UK and Zambia but he has also dabbled in other ventures.

He has exhibited widely including the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm and Leeds City Art Gallery.
Most recently he exhibited and co-organised the immensely successful Bunker Project in South Devon.

Paul Klee likened the artist to a tree: "Nature is the root and the artist is the trunk who takes what the root offers and produces the treetop or work of art. Nobody would affirm that the tree grows its crown in the image of its root". His metaphor provides an explanation in words more succinct than I can muster to the thematic development of the way I work.
My ideas come from varied sources, be it the sea, the land, a weathered building, patterns in the estuary mud, plants climbing up a trellis, rusting machinery; there are infinite resources and everything has possibilities for exploration. I am interested in layers; peeling them back to discover something afresh. Explorations of colour and surface within a strong framework are a recurring theme. I love the effect age brings and the character it gives to an object.
Recycling plays a big part in my work. I scrape unused paint from my palette to re-use; cut hair is incorporated into my work along with old newspapers, sawdust, rags, pencil sharpenings, sand, ash and things I haven't thought of yet.
I get immense satisfaction from the joy of looking and my work is primarily entertainment for the eye, but after that initial engagement I would like to think that the viewer can share my visual journey and appreciate how the work evolved from its original starting point to the finished piece. Each starting point is rooted in observation, either direct or from memory. When we look at something we take away different memories, like after-images, the visual imprint giving lasting pleasure.
"Sometimes I dream of a work of art of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of object, meaning and style. This, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing to bear the possibility occasionally in mind". (Paul Klee)

View my website http://www.ian-carr.com/