Guy Batey

Guy Batey's work resonates with the principles of colour field painting that emerged in America in the late 1940s as an immediate response to gestural action painting. 'Colour field' seemed an apt title as works resembled pure fields of colour with soft tonal changes and avoided any sense of mass that alluded to the figurative or landscape form. Gestural painting had evoked an omnipotence and engendered an emotive response from the viewer, while the antithesis was experienced through the contemplative tranquility of these vast colour field canvases. Batey has similarly abandoned all forms of traditional structural composition to focus on the use of pure formal painting processes as he seeks to connect with his primordial emotions. He is methodical and careful in his approach to painting, where each layer is delicately applied in a linear format, building over time into a dense network of soft tonal colour changes that shimmer on the surface of the canvas. The very act of painting, the slow thoughtful movement of the hand that caresses the linen surface, creates a quiet gentle rhythm which allows the mind to float in a transcendental trance and creates a calm efficacious result. Clement Greenberg states, 'You like it, that's all, whether it's a landscape or abstract. You like it. It hits you. You don't have to read it. The work of art-sculpture or painting-forces your eye​'; this serves as a useful reminder of how one can engage with an artwork from the most literal to the most conceptual and abstract.