Christian Figg
Christian Figg is a contemporary landscape painter whose work is devoted to the Suffolk coast. From 1995 to 2003 Christian showed every year in the Essex Open Exhibition at the Beecroft Art Gallery in Westcliff-on-Sea, and from 2002 to 2005 was one of twelve contemporary and conceptual artists working in the Synchro Studio, a former factory converted into studios in Leigh-on-Sea. A first solo exhibition followed at the Beecroft in 2004 and sold out. Since then a loyal network of private collectors in London and across East Anglia has bought and commissioned work directly from the studio.
In 2005 Christian moved from Essex to the Suffolk coast to live among the subjects of the paintings, and now has a home and studio on the edge of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, just inland from Sizewell. The studio was open to the public each June from 2005 to 2009 as part of Suffolk Open Studios, and Christian has remained an associate member ever since.
In 2010 Christian was one of the artists featured in Artists in Our Midst, published by Green Pebble, a book offering an insight into the work of 70 leading artists in East Anglia. In 2011 the then University Campus Suffolk in Ipswich invited Christian to become a founder member of its Atrium Studios, where established artists worked alongside art graduates setting up their first studios. In 2013 and 2015 Christian organised and curated the CO2art exhibitions and awards for the Suffolk Climate Change Partnership, part of Suffolk County Council's Creating the Greenest County: exhibitions on the issue of climate change, open to students at Suffolk secondary schools. From 2015 to 2018 Christian worked from a studio at the Old Jet Arts Centre, a converted USAF building on the former Bentwaters Air Base at Rendlesham.
Artist Statement
I am a contemporary East Anglian landscape painter, my work focused on the stark beauty and solitude of the haunting coastline of Suffolk.
I have been painting since an early age, and have developed a unique personal visual language and style of painting that has come from my relationship with the landscape of East Anglia, and specifically the landscape and environment of the Suffolk coast.
This long, haunting, empty stretch of ever-changing shingle, sculpted by the wild North Sea, punctuated by isolated fishing communities and the brutal yet iconic industrialisation of a nuclear power station, eroding cliffs, reedbeds, heathlands and great big skies, has resonated deeply with me since childhood. It became my escape from the world, where I could be myself alone, and has come to define who I am as a person, and define me as an artist.
My paintings are graphically striking, simplified in form and colour, defined and redefined to the barest minimum, abstracted yet subtle and retaining enough to make them instantly recognisable, and are a response to the stark, raw beauty and sharp intensity of light and colour of the Suffolk coast. My work is characterised by a strong sense of solitude and stillness, which is echoed from within myself, but with strong sculptural subjects and defined contrasts: dark versus light, man-made versus natural, past against present.
The main themes running through my work are the remnants of the Sole Bay fishing industry - the open beach boats and the fishermen who work them - the crumbling cliffs of Dunwich and the sweep of the desolate shingle beach, stretching away to infinity, north to Walberswick and south to Dunwich Heath and RSPB Minsmere, and the big, brooding, abstract block shapes of the Sizewell nuclear power stations and the construction of Sizewell C.
