Garth arrived in the United Kingdom 15 years ago with his suitcase and a taste for adventure. The change from leaving South Africa and his previous career as a chef and becoming an international selling artist has not been without challenge but has also been filled with plentiful opportunities. He has lived in several locations in the UK and is now settled in the lovely North Yorkshire market town of Stokesley (and claiming to never want to move again!)
Garth’s love for people, colour and movement is the foundation of his practice. His work originated in the subject of dance and he is still inspired by this. He recently had the opportunity to observe and sketch Northern Ballet (based in Leeds) during rehearsals for an upcoming show. These sketches will soon be leading to a new series of paintings. This initial interest in painting dance evolved over the time to also include cycling as a subject. Keeping to the theme of bold colour and movement, but with added mechanics. Garth has documented several cycling races for a number of years now and his “painting a day” approach to following races such as the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and our own Tours of Britain and Yorkshire has led to comprehensive body of work that collectors have snapped up from across the world. This year, Garth had the chance to witness the start of the Tour de France race for the team presentations in Bilbao (the taste for adventure now satisfied by frequent travelling). A third form of movement expressed in his painting comes from animals, most frequently horses and horseracing. Inspiration drawn from the everyday completes the repertoire and transforms more static items such as buildings and the world around us into landscapes that capture a moment in time with evocative colour and movement.
Garth’s work is held in collections on nearly all the continents (Antarctica is still being elusive…) and the ride his career as an artist has led him on has facilitated involvement in some amazing projects.
A select few of these project highlights include:
- Conversations with a Prisoner (working with offenders in the prison system and communicating through the medium of art)
- Artist in Residence for St Johns Church in Peterborough (documenting a year in the life of the church)
- Hamilton Races (Lanarkshire) – commissioned to paint a series for all the suites at the racecourse
- Reimagining the Stations of the Cross through community involvement and producing a commissioned series of work for a new church in Washington DC, USA
- Garth is currently the project manager for North Yorkshire Open Studios, an annual event enabling artists and makers (approximately 140 artists in 2023) to open their studios, meet, promote and sell their work direct to the public.
Please join Garth on a part of this ride by visiting his solo exhibition at the Heritage Gallery in Middlesbrough. It promises to be a colourful, eclectic, and somewhat wild mixture of paintings filled with bold movement.