MEET
Richard Heys
Richard Heys creator of paintings with presence and committed to colour.
Heys was born in West Yorkshire and grew up on a farm at the foot of the Pennines. Although he graduated with a degree in Fine Art in 1986 life took him on a long looping journey until he came back to painting in 2007. And so, 21 years after graduating, he gave himself permission to pursue a career as an artist.
Richard is a non-figurative painter based in a light-filled studio in Sussex, an acorn’s throw from the Ashdown Forest. He paints using print-making tools, brushes and bespoke squeegees. He works to re-mould inner spaces, to invite attention to and engagement with surface and depth, outer picture and inner soul-space. He aims to create the painting as a doorway.
I think that if I'm worth my salt as a painter I can create a little miracle, a moment of innocence and ecstasy on a daily basis. And occasionally I manage to do this! I silence my thinking mind and become a channel. In flow, things come into presence in my work. I do not illustrate or realise ideas, the work is its own revealing and holds a mystery for me. As Seamus Heaney writes, we go to art to be ‘forwarded within ourselves’. This casting myself forward enables me to bring a spaciousness and at times, a sense of the numinous into my work.
His work is in private and commercial collections both in the UK and internationally. Solo shows of his paintings have been held in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. In 2017 his work was chosen for the Creekside Open & the National Open Art Exhibition. He has had paintings selected for the ING Discerning Eye competition at the Mall Galleries in London in 2015, 2016 & 2021 and for the Royal Watercolour Society Open in 2024.
He is a member of Free Painters and Sculptors, Art Can, and the Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum.
