My brand new website is up and running,  take a look: geoffoke.com/

                               My new website is up and runnning take a look:  geoffoke.com/

                                My new website is up and running take a look: geoffoke.com/

Woodbine Contemporary Arts have some works for sale:

http://www.woodbinecontemporaryarts.co.uk/oke.html


Geoff Oke's website: http://geoffoke.com/

 My new website is up and running, take a look:

geoffoke.com

geoffoke.com

My new website is up and running, take a look: geoffoke.com/

My new website is up and running, take a look: geoffoke.com

Website: geoffoke.com

 Email: info@geoffoke.com

                                                                    Furrow, 48' x  43'          
                                             
                                                                 Clay, 48' x 43'
                                                               
                                                              Merge, 48' x 43'
                                                                 Ocean,  48' x 43'

My new website is up and running, take a look: geoffoke.com

Cycles in nature; renewal and decay, and a fascination with texture have become themes in my recent work. As a painting develops I start to see similarities in the textures and patterns of stone, moss, lichen and scarred tree bark in the painted layers, the built up surfaces that I obsessively rework. I use many glazes and washes to create a painting and scrape back the paint repeatedly. In this way marks and colour build up in density and richness. The nature of working like this recollects the grittiness of the Welsh landscape. I start with a few marks, usually derived from observation of the landscape. Drawings of the gnarled roots of a tree have provided a starting point recently. This initial composition can change many times; passages of paint, interesting areas of texture or vague forms emerging, become catalysts to take the painting in a particular direction. I allow the painting to take it's own course; sometimes this involves obliterating what has gone before. This process of change brings to mind decay and impermanence in nature. Motifs of rivers and flowing undercurrents sometimes occur as I'm painting. Though ideally, the forms in my work should have many interpretations. It’s more like an ebb and flow in nature. I am interested in the idea of tides affecting the land as well as the sea and in the effect of the tides on the body. When I’m working I am often trying to convey an emotion when I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s a the emotion of a fleeting memory. It can feel like I'm grasping at something that is transitory. The anger and frustration of trying to do such a futile thing can lead to a painting’s success; these emotions are conveyed in the finished painting.

geoffoke.com

My work will be at the spring Affordable Art Fair in Battersea on March 15th -18th. I'll be showing with Woodbine Contemporary Arts

geoffoke.com

I will be exhibiting at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol.The opening evening is on the 3rd of July. Click here to find out more.

My new website is up and running. Take a look: geoffoke.com

Tidal, Oil on Canvas, 107cm x 107cm

Motion, Oil on Canvas, 107cm x 107cm

Midnight Walk (Lunar Spectrum), 90cm x 90cm, Oil on Canvas.

A Still Forest Morning, 90cm x 90cm, Oil on Canvas

geoffoke.com

Untitled, 90cm x 110cm

Earth Fullness, 90cm x 110cm My new website:geoffoke.com

Gorgoch - Glow (Gorsgoch translates to 'Red Marsh') is taken from a series of paintings. As is typical with Oke's work it is an emotive response to landscape.The elements and textures of nature and of weather-worn man-made structures are mixed up and distorted in this patchwork-like geometry.

geoffoke.com

I always find it difficult to put into words why I paint the way I do, I came across these notes that I'd written. This made more sense to me than a lot of finished peices of writting I have written:

From memory, glazes, distorted and manipulated. Memory of darkened, enclosed spaces, visually ambiguous. Welsh rustic, memory of living, cold wind, sanctuary. Not of this landscape but an expression of this landscape, these moors, and sometimes emotional struggles. Using geometry, like burying, excavation. About warmth, weather, shelter, earth. Mixed up, shifted, into blocks, taking sections of colour and moving them around. The textures of nature and the man-made juxtaposed, combined, churned up, distorted like burning embers in a cave, an abandoned barn or a section of mist..

geoffoke.com

Dawn, Oil on Canvas, 90 x 90cm

Origin, Oil on Canvas, 90cm x 90cm geoffoke.com

I've finally found a studio, which isn't easy in this area. I've moved into a 3 bed house, I'm using the spare room as a studio. It feels good to be painting again. I've been doing some graphic work, cd cover and flyer for freinds and some drawing but no painting for some time. I'm happy with the direction of the work. I've been developing technique of using glazes. There is still much potential and unexplored territory here. The colours are becoming dirtier and have become warmer and richer in the paintings I'm working on at the moment. I have found that put colours straight from the tube yields better results. It is difficult to predict what will happen, but I am beginning to understand how colours behave when they are layered on top of each other. Painting in this way is a painfully slow process, allowing each layer to dry fully before moving onto the next. These surfaces appear rustic, heavy, downtrodden. I take these paintings many different directions before arriving at their conclusion, ripping them apart and pulling them back together again. I like the metaphor of an aged and battered surface, painted rusty metal. Of course it's not all about the aesthetics of the surface I am attempting to describe awkward and uncomfortable emotions, dark and complex internal struggles and battles. I don't know whether this comes across in thw work. Well, I'll carry on painting anyway see what happens.

                                                                 geoffoke.com

Enfoldment, Oil on canvas, 90cm x 90cm