Chris John Watson

 B.1952

Chris studied Art at Ruskin College Oxford. Over the next 40 years, while working in the financial and medical worlds, he refined his techniques in painting and antique restoration. During this time he recreated some of the finest of still life paintings – ‘windows into the past’. Now a full-time artist, he is intrigued by the perception of age in art. His unique works consider the disruptive sensation of displacement, of something that does not quite fit. He crafts the passage of time both in and on his paintings – employing glazes on the surface and on the reverse sales stamps alongside reproductions of panel maker’s marks from the 1617 Antwerp Panel Makers Guild – creating works unsettlingly ‘out of time, where the past becomes present.

‘Time validates existence; a painting has been created by a human being with physical materials in an attempt to create a reaction in the viewer. Age is another aspect of this experience. ’ CJW