Meet the Artist - Roger Shapley
Roger Shapley
This month we are thrilled to introduce you to local artist Roger Shapley. Roger is a local retired doctor who has always had a passion for art. His work is a mixture of styles; portrait, landscape and abstract but always in acrylic. Roger’s work has been shown in several galleries from Chipping Norton to Banbury and Oxford. He has kindly agreed to answer our questions into his artistic life. Thank you, Roger, for sharing your art path with us here!
WHAT DOES ART MEAN TO YOU ROGER?
I have since schooldays been fascinated by art, in particular painting and have tried to incorporate it and make it part of my life with varying degrees of success. I think it was the self expressive quality that was the most powerful attraction and I’ve had to struggle with the technical aspects progressively. Balancing the self-expression with the need to be able to draw was important for me. I took up art in the sixth form at college and though it was never considered academic enough to be serious it became for me not just academic but the fullest means of self-expression that I knew.
North Newington, Acrylic on canvas
HOW DID YOU BECOME AN ARTIST ROGER?
After school I spent a term at Edinburgh University on a French Degree and then switched to Hornsey College of Art in London where I spent a fantastic eighteen months. Great ambitions went astray again and I became involved with a quasi-philosophical-religious sect who considered the art work irrelevant. I can still remember taking all the precious art work to a tip!
I finally took up medicine and became a GP in 1972 but continued drawing while studying and practicing medicine.
I was able to retire a little early on health grounds and then took a Degree in Fine Art at de Montfort University. Absolutely brilliant. I had sympathetic tutors, studio time, space and room for self-development. After that I hired a studio in Shutford and had several shows there. I also managed to show a series of portraits at Chipping Norton Theatre Gallery and spent time at evening classes in Banbury on screen-printing. A group of us run a weekly life-drawing class in Deddington, though this has been halted temporarily due to the Virus.
Wroxton Abbey, Acrylic on canvas
WHO OR WHAT INSPIRES YOUR ART?
Art has always meant a huge amount to me though my access to it and practice at it has been varied and intermittent. I’m always intrigued when looking at Winston Churchill’s work and the assumption that it was such release for him. I think in fact he found a big chunk of his true self and the effort he put into it and the progression are evidence for that.
My favourite artists are Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach. Why? A combination of true life and abstraction.
Tryptych, Acrylic on canvas
WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS?
My work is a mixture of portrait, landscape and abstract with a concentration on portrait and always in acrylic paint. There is often a socio-political element as well. Perhaps a good example is a recent series of pastel portraits [sixty of them] I made in response to the recent outbreak of racism and police shootings in The USA. It came at the same time as the start of the shutdown here and there was palpable sense of uncertainty of what life was about and what we felt was most important to us. The pastels were enlarged from 5 cms photographs [from the Guardian newspaper] to 50 x70 pastels. They were all done at the beginning of the year and were to me an expression of the wide range of people who’d been affected by events they couldn’t understand - usually adversely.
There’s a huge sense of relief when something appears which is satisfactory!
Ascending a staircase (after Daumier’s woman descending a staircase), Acrylic on canvas
WHY I #LOVEART…
There’s a huge sense of relief when something appears which is satisfactory!
Roger Shapley
