Keith Tyson (b. 1969)
Nature Painting
signed, titled and dated 'Nature Painting K. Tyson 2006.' (on the reverse)
mixed media on aluminium
36⅛ x 72⅛in. (91.7 x 183.2cm.)
Executed in 2006

PROVENANCE

Haunch of Venison, London.

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SPECIALIST NOTES

Winner of the Turner Prize in 2002, Keith Tyson grew up amidst the bountiful natural beauty of the Lake District. He carries the spirit of his Cumbrian youth into his paintings, where he continues to explore the wonders and complexity of nature, metaphysics and human existence. Tyson’s fascination with nature and the process of generation – of how things come to be – is manifested in his artworks and series. Tyson welds together elements that otherwise stand apart in the contemporary world - science and art, philosophy and nature – and opens the mind to the myriad of possibilities that could be found in their combinations and juxtapositions.

The unpredictability of nature comes into play in his Nature Paintings series undertaken between 2005-2008. For each Nature Painting, the artist adds paint, pigments and various chemicals of varying viscosity, heat and chemical composition onto an acid-primed aluminium panel. As the materials are allowed to interact under gravity and heat, the painting comes into being. The artist has little control over the outcome of each work; Nature is as much the painter as Tyson is. The final composition that emerges from the chemical reaction coincidentally calls to mind the elements of nature – cell structures, the cosmos, earth formations, water and air. However, the series is named not for the subject matter of these paintings, but the manner in which they are made – by nature and its physical laws.

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