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Articles> Jeremy Andrews

Jeremy Andrews: Heads Up
Green Pebble Winter 2009/2010 issue
By Paul Dance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For years Jeremy Andrews has had a studio at Wysing arts in Bourn, south-west of Cambridge. There he produces portraits which at first glance appear photo-realistic, but which, he says, delves deeper than any photograph would. ‘I don’t regard my pictures as photo-realism, although I do of course go for a realistic representation. I try to achieve a quality more representative of the person as a character.’ The attention to detail, the colouring and the texture of flesh and hair are, in many ways, highly realistic, but there is a heightened sense of the person in them that is usually absent from photographs.

As Jeremy explains in his website, he explores ‘the notion of self-image and how we see ourselves and, of course, how others perceive us, suggesting that there is something inherently voyeuristic about our culture.’

Many of his pictures feed this point back to the viewer by making the face on the canvas confrontationally direct in a way that dares them to look away. This is particularly evident in the cases of the people with disabilities who were on a working project at Wysing. Jeremy received an Arts Council grant for 2004/2005 to create a number of paintings of these subjects. He approached this by getting them firstly to photograph each other. He then painted from the photographs so that his own viewpoint was filtered through theirs...

This is only a small part of Green Pebble's feature article. Please email us to discuss receiving a copy of this article.

Jeremy Andrews has recently begun showing at Williams Gallery on Gwydir St in Cambridge. For more about Jeremy, visit Jeremy Andrews and Wysing Arts Centre.

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