Galleria Primitiva ~ Galleria Moderna
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Galleria Primitiva
Charles Pizer ~ Artist/Solar Art
Thomas W Bates ~ Artist/Sculptor
Stuart Hirst ~ Artist/Painter
Original Paintings
oil / watercolor

Giclée Prints
Hirst ~ Wet Streets series
Hirst ~ Wet Streets series
Hirst ~ Wet Streets series
Hirst ~ Wet Streets series
Hirst ~ Wet Streets series
Hirst ~ Wet Streets series
Watercolors
Galleria Moderna
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Born in Bradford in 1950, from an early age, Hirst drew & painted with an ability far above his age & subsequently never strayed from 'art' as his vocation. He took a one-year foundation course at Bradford College of Art, followed by Fine Art studies at Exeter Art College, gaining his degree in 1972.

After college, Hirst worked in his parents' business in Bradford & painted in his spare time. Many of his early works were large oil paintings of 'regulars' playing dominoes & 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 '80s, Hirst gradually moved away from huge oils on canvas & began to develop his trademark style:  Wet Street Scenes, capturing the shimmer of rain on cobbles & 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 & lost forever, making the pictures extremely collectable.
Coming soon:
Oil Paintings
from the
Surreal Townscapes series
In the early '90s, Hirst embarked on a style he had created whilst at Exeter, a style he refers to as his Surreal Townscapes. Although many are based on real places, they have a surreal quality with inspiration coming from memory, dreams, & the influence of artists such as Hopper & Lowry. Hirst comments, "I like to look up at buildings above the ground or first floor, trying to imagine the story that goes on behind shuttered windows & 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. In these works, I have gone from the realism of the Wet Streets to something more fluid & deeper, with a touch of humour & pathos."
In these paintings, the viewer sees a colourful world filled with strange figures, with enough detail to give each an identity. Through Hirst's Surreal Townscapes, we travel on a journey of voyeurism through a 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 & engineering works of Bradford in the '50s & '60s.
Galleria Primitiva ~ Galleria Moderna
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Galleria Primitiva
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giclée prints
originals
Wet Streets series