In Richard Boyd-Dunlop’s recent practice, dense rhythms and repetitions of form invoke the connection we experience through our shared cultural referents. His work expresses how our currencies, which so often include the pop cultural material that we’ve all assimilated and loved in its various forms, the comics, cartoons and arcade games, are in some sense tribal and reach beyond mere product or commodity to become shared symbols, a lingua franca.
Richard’s signature style lays down dense topographical backdrops, bold, colourful and joyful, often on a grand scale. He manipulates layers of paint to expressive abstract effect, unlocking a gateway to the alternative world inside his brain. The starting point for Boyd-Dunlop’s work is that form of drawing that is closest to dreaming, doodling. Its freewheeling associations overrun boundaries to move simultaneously in all directions. He describes his working method as one where each painting has been generated by the narratives of the one before it; in this way the works constitute something like the screengrabs of a constantly mutating, recombinant project.
Taking inspiration from topical events, pop culture and recognisable icons, as well as a fantastic tribal past, his created characters and familiar figures connect with the viewer on a deep and fundamental level, pushing the buttons of memory and reverie. We’re reminded of the ever-replicating patterns and echoes of tribal or folk art. Boyd-Dunlop’s work is often a tapestry-like matrix of forms and fragments, an ultra-symmetrical vortex where half-remembered cartoons and idiosyncratic versions of retro icons emerge from clouds of possibility. It links the lysergic aspects of sixties Pop with the implicit psychedelia of contemporary digital culture and the kaleidoscopic structure of the internet.
Not content to confine himself to paint, Richard has delved into digital creation exploring animation and augmented reality to push his practice to the cutting edge of innovation. This, together with Boyd-Dunlop’s interest in non-traditional materials and processes – glitter, neon strips, holography, discs – often edge the paintings towards the celebratory dazzle of religious artforms, particularly mandalas and stained glass. But they also bring to mind the densely layered online constructions of Beeple and r/Place that seem to transcend the limitations of the still image and transform as we watch, registering the dizzying overloads of contemporary culture.
Constantly learning, evolving and up-skilling, Richard Boyd-Dunlop continues his mission to colour the world from the dreamscapes inside his mind.