Glenn Badham

LOVE AND CURIOSITY

One of the most remarkable qualities of Glenn Badham’s work is its sincerity. His work maintains an admirable directness regarding feeling and intention.

By using a synthetic palette, Badham creates bright, bold visions of the world around him. He makes pen and ink sketches and mixed media drawings, which later evolve into oil paintings. His work celebrates the colour and wonder around us and how we --human beings-- interact and fit within the natural world.

Being a Ballroom dancer since childhood has been a significant influence on his work. Rhythm and repetition are his permanent attraction points, while he has a very distinctive way of capturing the human body and movement. His artistic practice, including rapid sketches developed to larger paintings, has allowed him to get inspired from and work in unique environments such as dance halls, theatre stages, ballrooms, or Jazz Clubs. The moving body in all these works has an astonishing vibration, achieved through skilful expressionistic games between light and shadow.

His artistic genealogy in approaching nature counts from 18th-century British landscape painting, up to now. His trees’ foliages are in a sensitive dialogue with John Constable’s naturalism and his rolling form of clouds own a glimpse of William Turner’s skies. At the same time, his colourful, picturesque syntheses keep a quality reminding of recent David Hockney’s multicoloured and playful contemplations on landscapes. Deeply inspired by British painting tradition, National Heritage and history, Badham desires to bring back a romantic view of wildlife and countryside. His artistic vision is focused on re-establishing a new relationship between man and nature, based on awe, wonder and respect, that are so indispensable today. In his imagery, the natural world becomes a magical place, full of possibilities, where multiple human interactions are studied and represented with curiosity and love.

Gelly Gryntaki The Art Newspaper/Smart Artist Hub, London 2021