Richard Whadcock is a contemporary landscape painter who specialises in atmospheric paintings. He studied at both Bristol Art College and the Royal College of Art, gaining a background in printmaking and lithography. The printmaking process gave Whadock a working structure which has transposed onto his approach to painting, from the preparation of a painting surface to hand wiping the paintings themselves, similar to hand wiping an etching plate. His process involves paring the work down to the bare essentials while leaving enough of the image to provide the viewer with a dramatic and amorphous sense of place, rather than a specific capturing of one.
The landscape itself only a starting point, Richard encourages the momentum of the painting process to take over, organically building its own unique patina and language of marks. Familiar details are expunged by a coastal mist, smudged away by a downpour or bleached out by intense low morning or evening sun. It is these transitions from one state to another that the paintings deal with.
Elements of the great masters have influenced Whadock’s art. Echoes of Rembrandt’s backgrounds allow the paintings to emerge from dark to light. Turner’s handling of atmosphere and the gestural nature of Twombly and Motherwell combine to make Whadcock’s paintings powerfully evocative and highly collectable.
