Stuart Hirst
Stuart was born in Bradford in 1950. From an early age drew and painted with an ability far above his age and subsequently never strayed from ‘art’ as his vocation. After sixth form he took a one-year foundation course at Bradford College of Art, following this he studied Fine Art at Exeter Art College, gaining his degree in 1972.
After college he worked in his parents business in Bradford and painted in his spare time. Many of his early works were large oil paintings of regulars playing dominoes and having a pint in the family pub.
His first major exhibition was in 1977 where he showed at Bradford Central Library. In 1979 he won the Yorkshire Television Fine Art Fellowship Award, which resulted in a number of one-man shows across the North East of England. His exhibition at Cartwright Hall saw the largest number of visitors for many years.
In the early 80’s Stuart gradually moved away from huge oils on canvas and began to develop his trademark style: Wet Street Scenes: capturing the shimmer of rain on cobbles and flagstones in the Industrial Landscape. Over the years he has painted hundreds of Yorkshire back streets. Changes in the urban landscape has meant that many of these places have been demolished are now lost forever making the pictures extremely collectable.
In the early nineties, tiring of the concentration required to produce his detailed watercolours, he embarked on a style he had created whilst at Exeter. A style he refers to as his ‘Fantasy Street Scenes’. Although many are based on real places they have a surreal quality with inspiration coming from memory, dreams and the influence of artists such as Hopper, and Lowry.
“I like to look up at buildings above the ground or first floor trying to imagine the story that goes on behind shuttered windows and lace curtains. I try to capture those moments in life; a lonely face at a window, a single light bulb hanging down unshaded, the flicker of a TV set. Everything around us is so interesting. . . You just have to look a bit more closely”. He continues,
“ In these works I have gone from the realism of the wet streets to something more fluid and deeper, with a touch of humour and pathos.“
In these paintings the viewer sees a colourful world filled with strange figures with enough detail to give each an identity. With Stuart we travel on a journey of voyeurism through a seedy world of bedsit land, of lonely people, of streets filled with activity, through to the derelict back streets of a time that looks in the past but really is now. Much of them based on childhood memories of the industrial past, of train spotting, playing on the rough ground of spoil heaps near the mills and engineering works of Bradford in the 50′s and 60′s.
Here at the Gallery we always have Stuart Hirst Originals and Signed Limited Edition Prints in stock
Please contact us if you require a specific image to check availability.
