K R Pomeroy

I was born in 1948 in Great Yarmouth. I studied History and Fine Art

at Redland College in Bristol from 1968 to 1971. After teaching both

these subject for two years I “specialised” in teaching History. I am

however, a qualified art teacher and two of the three years at Redland

were spent studying and practicing art as a subsidiary subject. Part of

my Open University degree course was in Humanities Foundation which

included aspects of art history. The course Renaissance and Reformation

Studies included substantial study of the development of artistic theory

and practice as well as the changing status of the artist. I studied for

an MA in Creative Entrepreneurship in 2008 - 9 which had a substantial

studio practice element including the option, which was taken, to create a

piece of work with 3000-5000 commentary for the dissertation. My artistic

education is on-going.

Over the years I produced work sporadically but sadly none of these works

have survived. Instead of waiting for retirement to afford the opportunity

to follow a creative path I began taking photographs in the 1980s and began

painting again in 1999.

2003/4 saw me break into the French market with two solo exhibitions in the

south of France. I now have a studio in France and work there as well as

in Norwich.

Until late in 2004 I was influenced by the abstract expressionist approach.

The tension between chance and control is dynamic. Working with the ideas

of chaos and control reflects my own and humanities attempts to make sense

of, and bring order to, the vision of existence. I had been working mainly

with a rich palette of reds and blues. These colours react in the eye and

give movement to the work. I saw echoes of the opposing elements of fire

and water in these colours and something of the chaos of the universe

being brought into form.

Up-date: Statement for Fringe Festival Oct. 2006.

(Written in the third person)

Keith Pomeroy’s career has taken an interesting direction since his

determination in 2004 to do whatever he felt like doing.   He has

restricted his palette and followed a rather minimalist path – quite a

departure from his wild and colourful early work.  In fact recently Keith

has painted only in black.  He feels the minimalist work has taken a lot

of courage as he doesn’t usually subscribe to the epithet “Less is more”.

He was inspired by the adage of Robert Morris:

“Simplicity of form is not necessarily simplicity of experience”.

Keith has had a long term interest in the concepts of chaos and order which

informed his earlier work.  His awareness of the chaos/order elements in

many creation myths have led to a series of paintings that are increasingly

minimal and black and explore the notion of “just at the beginning”.

His paintings were described in 2006 in a published review:

“Keith Pomeroy is perhaps the most challenging painter in the show - his

works are subversive and modernist in essence. Monochrome ……. they are

almost punctured from beneath the façade so that the canvas is stretched

to its limit. They combine an aesthetic recognition with an uncomfortable

suspicion that there is more going on beneath the surface than we are

allowed to see.”

Susan Gunn

End of 2006 statement.

The black paintings have become a creation myth series.  Based on work

initially with pupils exploring creation myths it was noticed that

common themes are darkness to light and chaos to order ( a basic theme

in my work for 10 years). Beyond this I have researched world wide

creation myths and am interested in scientific cosmology – the Big Bang,

black holes, dark matter – all resonate for me within my work.

The first black, deformed canvas paintings had dilute lines of white paint

which were allowed to flow creating random lines which represent light

“breaking through”.   Those lines were dispensed with and instead panels

of textured black were introduced to deformed canvases creating varied

tonality - light “breaking through” again.  In a later phase of this work

circles ( hugely significant as the perfect form in many cultures and

imbued with paradoxical elements in Taoist philosophy) were introduced,

punched through the canvas (clearly a reference to Fontana) and the raw

canvas now represented light “breaking through” and the unification of

space behind and in front of the canvas surface.


 I have explored new avenues in purely black paintings.  The four

elegies for Rothko took his compositions but re-worked them in different

shades of black.  An extensive assignment for my MA explored the use of a

variety of black paints both artists’ paints and commercial, industrial

paints.  For my dissertation piece I  played safe using acrylic but

pushing the boundaries by looking at how to divide space and use “colour”

(blacks) to achieve this with deformation of the canvas and random lines –

in black - created by such deformation.  The dissertation piece is a

multi-panelled piece 6x1.5 metres and is the most recent creation myth

painting. This dissertation piece was launched at Mandell’s Gallery,

Norwich,  4 – 11 July 2009.  It was subsequently exhibited at Allen & Overy

 in November 2009 and is currently rented to UEA London.

Dec 2010

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k r pomeroy m.a. - visual artist