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BIOGRAPHY

Purcell is an artist and teacher who lives and works in Bedford, UK. His practice of painting and drawing is informed by his experience of working with and curating fine art and social history collections over 10 years at The Higgins Art Gallery and Museum. He is currently working with archive images of actresses performing as Shakespeare characters, as well as images from the Hollywood 'Golden Age' and earlier.

Purcell has developed a consistent theme of working with archive collections, and found images. He explores these images through hi painting process hovering between monochromatic renderings and subtle play of colours, in his process of extracting meaning and translating the images into a painted form. His present work explores the visual culture of cinema and stage, and the connections between publicity stills of the golden age of Hollywood via Pictorialism to fine art traditions. He is currently working on a series engaging with depictions of Shakespeare's women in art and on the stage.

Earlier projects involved images of the aviation and cultural history of his hometown, and a several year project exploring the visual culture of atomic testing in partnership with UNLV professor Dr Andrew Kirk. He exhibited both at the Royal Academy and the Smithsonian affiliated Atomic Testing Museum in 2014, the Nevada Humanities Galleries in 2016 & 2017, and his illustrations for the NCPH Book Award winning non-fiction graphic novel, Doom Towns, for Oxford University Press were published in 2016.

Purcell studied History of Art, Architecture and Design BA (Hons), De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, which led to a role as Curatorial Assistant, at The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford, UK, from 2004-2013. At that point he worked a a freelance artist and illustrator as a Resident at Bedford Creative Arts, 104 Midland Road, Bedford, UK. After teaching life drawing for a number of years, he moved full time in to art education in 2016, resulting in a few years with his practice on hold,  before returning to painting in 2021. 


ARTIST STATEMENT

Each of my paintings began with an interaction with an image, a moment of excited recognition that I have found an image or series, or a whole collection, that allows me to step into a world that resonates with some long-held emotion or sensation. There is often a tonality to the images, light, shadow, an expression of an idea, or a figure caught mid-movement. Dancers and actresses fill my personal archive. The images are rarely true portraits but portraits of a person in character, and though I make work of faces and figures, it is not the person but the idea they represent in that image that I am drawn to.  

Once an image or series of images has been selected, I sketch out the image with a brush, as much by eye as with a few key measurements, working around the image repeatedly – building understanding. Colour plays an important part in the image, even within the monochromatic dreamworld I am trying to create. Prussian blue, indigo, Naples yellow: I lower the saturation with true greys or brown trying to create areas of subtle interest within the textures and the brush marks. Sometimes the colours are dialled up and separated as in In Dreams, 2024, where the blue skin appeared without conscious choice, working in a flow state, or only became ‘blue’ when separated by the yellow (later green) background. At rare times colour comes in last with glazes over a grisaille, but normally it is embedded in my process of translation. It is this translation through my hand and eye that engages the memory. The process of painting engages your brain in a very particular way: I can always remember something I’ve drawn in detail far greater than if I had merely looked at it. With many images this relationship with the image is part of the impetus to make the work; repeated working on it gives it a place and time in my own life and history. 


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