S O I L - Richard Goold

​​Richard lives in a small rural village in Berkshire, located in South East England. The local area has a long history of agriculture, with many who live there having worked within that profession at some point in time, in one way or another. This way of life has naturally become a large part of informing Richard’s painting practice, influencing the surface he paints upon, hessian, a product used widely within agriculture. Its coarse texture and heavy weave aids in abstracting the subjects he paints upon its surface.
Richard’s work has always blurred the line between the figure and the abstract. Through paint he depicts scenes from reference images he has taken and from his own memory, drawing upon his day-to-day life living in rural England. Whether it be memories of working with his father, a rose grower, in the fields, or nights out drinking in the local pubs, these moments frequent his paintings - sometimes together. These depictions of memories do not always translate in paint how they happened in reality, with his imagination often skewing the narrative, giving in to the escapist pleasure of paint as a substance and a vehicle to new stories. This, combined with the conflict between the sublime and the mundane of working life within his pieces, conveys an exploration of the riddle of the human condition.