Christopher Langley

About the Artist:  Christopher Langley - http://www.chrislangleyart.com/index.htm
I was born, raised and schooled in Cape Town, South Africa.  In 1991 I moved to the UK with my mother, sister and grandmother and settled in Ipswich due to family connections. I did my art schooling in Ipswich and Wolverhampton, graduating in 1997. Over the years I have worked in various capacities for a Buddhist charitable giftware business, Windhorse Trading, which Evolution is affiliated to.

Since starting my degree I have exhibited around England, mostly in East Anglia (I was selected to be included in: the Ipswich Open, On the Border and The Suffolk Show Case) and London, I am a member of the United Artists Society.
In 2005 I had my first solo show at the Cape Gallery in Cape Town, and have continued to show there as well as in other galleries in Cape Town and Prince Albert.  I have also exhibited in group shows in Aspen, USA, at the Aspen Art Museum, the Red Brick Arts Center, and local galleries.
As well as exhibiting I have undertaken a variety of private commissions and a number of public carvings including a carved wooden architrave/wall piece for the Ipswich Buddhist Centre.

My degree was in sculpture but over the years I have taken more and more to painting.  Much of my earlier painting consisted of stylized trees overlying a stylized landscape.
Connecting and/or contrasting the background and foreground so that they have specific identities yet relate interests me in particular. The paintings at Kerseys look at collapsing the two onto one plain, de-emphasizing the space and reducing everything to patterns. But, at the same time, maintaining two identities in the painting: a ‘rocky landscape’ inspired by Afghan rugs, geology, Bauhaus architecture, Khmer ruins etc; and ‘a sky‘, inspired by: geological folding, psychedelic/op art, agate etc.
I am intrigued by how any one object can be unravelled into numerous materials, causes and associations and seek to show this through the eclecticism informing my paintings.