IMMANENT SPACE

“…Like Cézanne he is the wondering participant in sharing space with the objects which surround him. Like Cézanne this simplicity can sometimes be a little clumsy, sometimes extraordinarily graceful. Each work feels its way towards the inexpressible, to what can only be felt. His compositions do  not push out or up,  ‘explode’, or attempt to please and engage by vitality. His is careful that they sit on the  picture plane and within their edges. In this they follow the tradition of serious abstract painting- to construct another world, which is neither in the space of the viewer nor a window, but is purely paint. The paint is thick but never heavy, sometimes dense but never solid, The surfaces are soft and penetrable, deep but easy to break through, holding what is underneath but not imprisoning it.

This often deep and unpredictable layering of paint creates texture and colour in a uniquely original and personal way: dense matted paint like moss, hard defined strokes of the palette knife, uneven, sometimes meandering, strokes of breaking colour. Rich vermillion, cadmium yellow over viridian green, cerulean blue and violet over a changing grey: close up, the depth and complexity of the texture behind the visible colour becomes apparent, the richness and ambiguity of the colour layers fascinating. The Shapes disappear,  becoming vibrations of colour, flows of paint, accidents of tone which confound identification and definition. This is a outstandingly courageous personal investment in what oil paint can do…”

- Auszug aus: “A Renewal of the Northern European Tradition: Richard Ward’s Paintings”
Dr. Edward Pile, 2026