Luke George, The Consequence of Youth

Luke George is an abstract painter based in Liverpool, currently studying for his MFA (Painting) at Manchester School of Art. Luke’s large-scale painted works are the product of time-intensive, cumulative mark-making, which finds anchorages in colour and a balance between abstract and figurative imagery; between minimalism and excess.

The paintings represent a combined output sourced from both an inward, autobiographical concentration and a more outward perspective, with which Luke reflects upon the modern environment, interested primarily in the capacity in which painting can operate as a method of documentation of memory. Luke incorporates a variety of imagery throughout his work, borrowing from classical notions of landscape and portraiture painting, which are then reimagined, collaged and presented with a modern, reductionist twist in order to invent scenes vibrant and rich, often occupied by bashful, uncomfortable and mischievous characters which inject an innate unease into their surroundings.

Fraught with abstract verdancy and suggestions of a figure, Luke's paintings imbue a sense of the strangeness in the seemingly normal, offering a perverse beauty within a world informed by the colourists and abstract expressionists alike, that shine through in thoughtful reductions.