An appreciation of the exhibition Brightness, luminance and confusion by Meredydd Barker

"...I had run into Phillip (brother) the previous day. He was passing me in a supermarket, and I was impressed by the sureness with which my peripheral vision identified him, by his shape and volume, as if there were a template of him in my mind which he alone could occupy..."
Martin Amis, Experience, 2000

In other words he was familiar. the original latin familiaris, means family or a confidential freindship. But the familiar is also the imp behind the parents leg, poised to do whatever next comes to mind and who said anything about consequences? But knowing that close family and freinds appear in Ben Lloyd's paintings makes no difference to what we think he's up to. The guessing game of who's who soon gives way to what must be a complete strangers response, the unmediated first impression that the people in the paintings are real people who live now. Now, what are they to is a different question. Like the imp, every figure here is poised to make a decision and maybe ponder the consequences of that decision.

Blocks of colour that smooth instead of flesh out a figure or profile are whipped into shape by a line that describes character with rare discipline. There are colour schemes here that aren't beholden to the environment that they describe. For skin to be that blue there needs to be a strong hold on the themes lest the viewers perception become cartoonish. But these are thematically confident works, organised without contrivance, that have a lightness of touch that would soon be heavy in less sensitive hands. Nothing in these landscapes is easily done, it just seems that way.

And landscapes is what they are. They aren't the abstract gurning of a Turner where a lone shepp called fudge keeps us, and Turner for that matter, in the real world, but impressions of environment that simply show how indivisible we are from what we do and where we do it. In these paintings there always seems to be an open door or window, a remote exit for the eye to go and maybe see a bigger picture.

A dead bird, that may be under glass in the foreground or under feet in the middle, could seem symbolically contrived. Its awkward angles conjure death too easily until you realise that the first impression was a clue, as it nearly always is. It maybe under glass, it maybe under those indifferent feet, is it a mosaic on a dance floor or is it tiny in the foreground as if held in front of a camera? Who knows, but you keep thinking about it and other examples such as the beautifully organised chairs in one painting, the beatific eyelashes in another. All this indicates a maturity, an avoidance of grandstanding, that not only bodes well for the future, but has reaped dividends already. Ben Lloyd paints what he sees in front of him, not what he thinks he sees, and this has allowed meaning its own life. By doing this he seems to let the world explore him, the only satisfactory state of affairs for any artist. This has removed the tyranny of choice from his work. All artists suffer that same question - Why? And not many can come up with a satisfactory answer. They forget to yield to their senses and reply with the only answer that satisfies and begins to hint at a myriad possibilities - BECAUSE IT WAS THERE.
Meredydd Barker