Seth Marshall
Degree: BA Fine Art
University: Falmouth University
Graduation Year: 2016
New Blood Art Commentary
Sometimes the scene with the reality that strikes us most, seems to be a mirage. Seascapes immersed in light; a still life thrumming with colour; the woosh of an evening sky above a curving coastal road: Seth Marshall’s concern is the visual intensity of an image, and his paintings remind that this is a sensual experience.
In ‘Penlee Point’, one of Marshall’s Cornish scenes, we encounter a sheer impression in the radiating lines of light on water and the dark outline of the cliffs. The brushwork can be distinctly pared down and structural against the canvas. Urban scenes such as ‘Dusk, Summer’ use colour to track the gorgeousness of light contrasting the dark, and in Impressionist-inspired still lives colour is used joyfully, but with practised restraint. In the tradition of trompe l’oeil experimentation, Marshall’s interior and exterior spaces convey the truth of an image as a confluence of events: subject, object, and light wave.
Artist Statement
I'm most affected by imagery - whether from direct observations in daily life or from myriad technological reproductions of images through an ever-growing profusion of devices. Making sense of such a potential overload of visual information requires a decision-making process of selection when choosing an image as representational material in the painting process. Subject matter is almost irrelevant to me - the proliferation of this visual information renders any thematic connection from one image to the next, somehow diluted in importance. In a sense, the subject is negated from the image and that is what connects them and makes them the same somehow. There is a freedom, therefore, as detachment from subject and obvious meaning can be superseded by, perhaps, subtle nuance in colour, tone, brushstrokes for instance - the image can be the vehicle for a more subconscious communication of an abstracted and ambiguous visual language. The shape of a sky against rooftops, for instance, becomes a starting point or component for a composition; a recession of space or void inspires an area of rich colour. Within this context of evaluating potential source material, the possibilities for inspiration can come from anywhere and are boundless.
Solo Exhibitions
(2018) Dark into Light, Circa 21, Penzance
Group Exhibitions
(2017) Out Of The Studio, Circa 21, Penzance, Cornwall
(2012) Kumi Middleton & Seth Marshall, Thoresby Gallery, Newark
(2012) Worldly Impressions Exhibition, Belleville Gallery, Belleville, Ontario
(2011) Painters 4 - UK to CA, The Academy Gallery, Bath, Ontario
(2006) Two Painters, One Carver, Sandpiper Gallery, Mousehole, Cornwall
(2004) Marshall Exhibition, Three Generations, Sandpiper Gallery, Mousehole, Cornwall