Basil Beattie
Ladder and Step Series

Two Rooms presents the third solo exhibition by British artist, Basil Beattie  – a series of oil stick paintings on handmade paper that echo his celebrated large-scale paintings on canvas. All executed within the last year these new works come directly from his 2018 solo exhibition, A Passage of Time at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Beattie’s visual language employs pictograms alongside architectural and spatial components to explore the endless possibilities of abstract pictorial space, acting as vehicles for conveying numerous symbolic associations. Beattie states, “My main intention is to refocus the meaning of these works, through the painted language, to a metaphorical level where the physical meaning ceases, but the ideas associated with them, such as progress, traveling through time, carefully negotiating the route etc. are there for contemplation.”

Basil Beattie is one of Britain’s most respected painters with an illustrious career spanning over 60 years. His work is in the collection of TATE London, and he has been invited to exhibit in major public galleries throughout the UK. His extensive teaching career at Goldsmiths’ College through the 1980s until 1998 has exerted a substantial influence on successive generations of artists.