Alan Charlton

Alan Charlton is one of the most radical artists of his era

Alan Charlton, born in 1948 in Sheffield, attended the School of Art in his home town from 1965 to 1966 followed by the Camberwell School of Arts until 1969, the University of Arts London, and last but not least the Royal Academy of Arts until 1972. Charlton rapidly developed into one of the most radical painters of his generation using exclusively the colour grey. He had already decided on a grey monochrome canvas in 1967 at the Royal Academy of Arts and thus stood consciously in opposition to the academic teaching he received. Charlton maintained this bold and radical commitment to the colour grey for his entire body of work, with all of his pictures painted in variations of grey. With this consistent orientation, he became a role model and an inspiration for many contemporary artists. 

Grey as colour or non-colour with particular properties

By his own admission, Alan Charlton was himself surprised which particular characteristics the colour grey offers for his artistic work. In the deliberate reduction of his extreme conceptual minimalism lies a complex derivation that gets to the bottom of the relationships between painting and its support medium, as well as the picture itself, the surrounding space, and the viewer. In doing so, the artist succeeds in creating an astoundingly broad palette of forms and formats which he often conceives as groups of interconnected elements, with the rectangle frequently serving as the starting shape. The English artist’s pictures are never limited to themselves but reach out and reference what lies outside their boundaries. Charlton creates his wide variety of grey tones himself by the skillful mixing of various spectral colours that bestows him a rich nuanced range from light white-grey to dark black-grey. 

Only one artist who paints grey pictures

Alan Charlton describes himself in a laconic understatement as an artist who paints grey pictures. Yet he is a disciplined and meticulous worker, standing in front of his canvas and painting every day from Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. In the course of his career, Alan Charlton has participated in numerous international exhibitions and filled entire floors with grey paintings. The play with dimensions, the precise measurement of form, the clever composition engineered to undermine the human perception of distance and scale, all characterise Charlton’s work and ensure that, despite all the grey shades, his pictures are never boring or monotonous. The artist does not follow a linear system, but creates his painting based on individual decisions that do not allow for rigid pre-calculations. 

Alan Charlton is married to fellow artist Lesley Foxcroft and lives and  works in Hatfield near London.