Dan Coombs

(b 1971United Kingdom. Lives and works in London)

Dan Coombs creates his composition studies from collage and paint, which unite the figures in his work with entirely invented surroundings, landscape dream worlds and interior spaces. These are human encounters seem charged with a mysterious, symbolic power. They are explorations of guilt, beauty and fear of isolation, that draw on myth, religion and psychoanalysis in order to try and grasp the real within the imaginary.

The paintings have a formality of composition and balance that underpins the energy of their execution but remain deliberately left open to interpretation by the viewer. They are attempting to capture the essence of an emotional situation, to represent ideas or embody meanings. The figures have an uncanny ambiguity - they can be interpreted as emanations of the artist’s psyche, or as creatures in their own right – trapped within dreamlike, gestural landscapes of heightened colour.

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