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Roy Petley (born 3 April 1950 ) is a British painter. Petley paints ''en plein air'' to depict the wide expanse of English beaches and the gentle allure of Venetian landscapes. His works have been likened to those of John Constable, Edward Seago, and Campbell Mellon, British painters whose styles were influenced by the Barbizon School and Impressionism. Beginning life in a children's home, he became one of the first artists to open an art gallery in Cork Street, a prestigious street lined with art galleries in London's Mayfair. His works are popularly collected by British royalty, including Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. == Early life and background == The first-born son of a large family, Roy Petley was born on 3 April 1951 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. When he was five, Petley was abandoned to the Woodlands School near Uckfield, Sussex. The school also doubled as a home for abandoned children. He escaped his rough and often violent surroundings through art, teaching himself how to paint and draw. At the age of sixteen, he received a scholarship to study art at Brighton University. But the pull of Italy and the country's old masters of art such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo proved too much. After a semester at Brighton University, he hitchhiked to Italy, settling in Florence where he eked out a living by drawing tourists who frequent the numerous cafes of the city, and studied the classics at the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti. It was also in Florence that Petley had the chance to work with the collections of old master prints and drawings of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi Gallery. Roy Petley paints light; it is his passion. Every image he creates is alive with light; it reveals and conceals, taking possession of space. Whether he is painting sky, water or the human figure he uses a mass of colours revealing them through subdued lights. These colours, which arethe very material of which the light is made, pulsate with life. Roy interprets rather than reproduces nature. He does not take the viewer by the hand and point out every nuance of the view before him. He hints and cajoles; this is poetry rather than pedantry. A subject as prosaic as a Norfolk village is rendered poetic by his form, his colours and, most especially, his light. Following in the tradition of John Constable, John Sell Coteman and Edward Seago, Petley summons up the drama and lowering threat of those huge Norfolk skies which relegate mankind to a walk-on role. In depicting nature versus man he establishes an empathy with the viewer; there is almost a ‘madeleine-moment’ when we are taken back to a shared experience and want to say ‘Yes, it was justlike that!’ Constable said that he had never seen an ugly thing in his life because whatever forman object might take ‘light, shade and perspective’ would always render it beautiful. Likewise Petley’ssense of beauty is not that of the object itself but of light and shade. In his nudes the figures and the backgrounds constitute a whole; the same light which caresses the female figure also caresses the background features. At the same time he casts light as a player in the mise-en-scène of his painting, especially when he places his models contre-jour. The resulting translucence renders the nudes ethereal, almost otherworldly; they have an innocence which beguiles. There is a stillness about them which renders them unthreatening to the viewer; thereis no interchange, no sexual connotation. When he wishes to emphasise the sensual, rather than the sexual, Roy executes his nudes in sanguine. The figures in his pastoral scenes have a romantic, idealised, out-of-time quality which is veryappealing and, again, veryseductive. Wewish to share the same time and the same place with these people; we wish to be a part of the scene. This is Roy’s gift, he is able to render what he sees around him with such a straightforward and uncritical eye that we, the onlookers, are seduced into sharing with him his optimistic, unclouded view of the world. Síle Connaughton-Deeny 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Roy Petley」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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