|
Aldo Balding
Born in Southsea in 1960 and
studied for a Diploma in Illustration at Southampton College.
Aldo now lives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France.
Beginning his career as a freelance illustrator his work appeared
in and on the front covers of numerous magazines including the
Sunday Times Culture Magazine, TV Times and Punch. Aldo is now
a recognized and successful figurative and portrait artist.
REVIEW: Tim Green, August 2008
- London
Leonardo DaVinci said: “to be a good painter is to paint
two main things: men and the working of man’s mind: the
first is the easier of the two.” It’s a quote that
has always resonated with Aldo. He admits to being a restless
painter, never entirely happy with his work – and always
striving to improve his technique.
It’s tempting for us, the
viewers, to wonder where these improvements can be made, such
is Aldo’s apparent mastery of his art. Every one of his
exquisitely mysterious vignettes is masterfully realized. For
example, in a recent piece titled “Odessey VI” two
figures each at a different angle to the viewer, creased jackets
throwing awkward shadows across the early evening town square,
is flawless.
We shouldn’t be surprised.
For all the modesty of Aldo, this is a painter who has dedicated
his adult life to mastering the technical challenges of figurative
art. Working as a storyboard illustrator for advertising agencies,
he developed a passion for anatomy and honed his craft until
he could draw the human form effortlessly from any angle. There
was a simple commercial reason for this – if you can draw
people convincingly without the need for models, it’s cheaper.
But the discipline also appealed to Aldo’s aesthetic curiosity.
Today, as a full time painter
choosing his subjects, Aldo remains dedicated to the human form.
But he puts his formal virtuosity at the service of human drama.
Virtually all of his paintings buzz with narrative possibilities.
Who are the three inscrutable men in Conversation III? What are
they planning? What have they just done? What are they going
to do? And what about the couple in The Early Hours? Are they
lovers? If so, is their affair bursting into life or fracturing?
Aldo is proud to admit he’s
in the storytelling business, even if he lets us fill in the
gaps. “I always try to put an element of mystery in my work,”
he says. “You can suggest so much in a gesture, in the way
someone stands. I like narrative in painting, because it casts
the viewer into a voyeuristic role.”
The pull of suggested narrative
explains why so many of the figures in Aldo’s work have
their backs to us. “When a person is face-on, it’s
a portrait, and the mystique is gone,” explains Aldo. Many
of these backs belong, of course, to the be-suited men that appear
throughout the artist’s work. The prevalence of so many
jackets and ties has promoted some to describe Aldo’s work
as nostalgic. This is something he’s keen to move away from.
“I prefer to think of the scenes I depict as timeless. They
are little dramas that could be from any era.”
But the suits will remain.
Simply, Aldo loves the formal challenge posed by all those silken
creases. Indeed, he’s recently applied himself to improving
the way he renders the kind of sharp and soft edges we see in
a painting such as the aforementioned Osyssey VI. It might sound
highly pedantic to the rest of us – edges? – but this
dedication to detail is what makes Aldo such a terrific craftsman.
And this collection of formally superb and profoundly mysterious
paintings proves it yet again.
MAGAZINE ARTICLES
Artist International
(Issue 22) - Front Cover. Artist
International (Issue 27) - 5 page feature
Artists and Illustrators
- June/July 2003
COMMISSIONS AND MAJOR
COLLECTIONS
British Prime Minister,
Gordon Brown.
Lady Laura Paul
The Frieder Burda Museum in Baden Baden Germany bought 2 works
for their collection
EXHIBITIONS
Catto Gallery solo show
2006. Catto Gallery solo
show 2007
Alexander Gallery solo
show 2006
The Royal Society of
Portrait Painters 2002. The
Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2003
The Royal Society of
Portrait Painters 2005.The
Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2006
The Royal Society of
Portrait Painters 2007
The BP Awards 2000
AWARDS
NSE Exhibition first
prize 2003. Arc salon finalist 2004, 2006
Artist international
first prize 2002
|
