ROBERT MADDISON was born in1946 in Newcastle Upon Tyne . He studied at both Newcastle and Manchester Colleges of Art.
Bob lives with his wife Elizabeth, daughter Natalie, and son Joseph in an 18 century cottage at the head of the Allen Valley , in the Northern Pennines . He has a studio attached to his cottage in which he produces and exhibits his work.
Most artists evolve towards their mature style in stages, with many false starts along the way. Bob Maddison is a rarity who in the seventies made a quantum leap from minimalist abstraction to finely detailed realism with no intermediate steps. He began painting watercolours that were often the size of traditional easel paintings and beyond, with the degree of development and detail pushed to extremes. Because of this and the depth of colour and range of tone his paintings give the impression of being painted in a more substantial medium. He seems fascinated by the shifting poles of abstraction and realism - two paths which he says 'lead to the same goal.' He uses the techniques of the realist to make pictures that 'feel very abstract.' In fact he calls his work 'abstract-realism.'
His subject matter is usually still life or floral, although he says that he is not interested in the subject matter, which is just an armature for his ideas. He doesn't feel the need to make changes in what he sees, the idea being to take a subject and explore its reality as intensely as possible. The essential qualities that he looks for in his subject matter are colour, complexity of the forms and the patterns of shapes. The abstract feeling that his paintings have is added to by his rather unusual working methods. As he prefers to work on a flat surface rather than at an easel he turns his larger paintings upside down and completes the top half of the painting before he turns the painting the right way round to complete the bottom half of the painting. So as not to lean on completed work he works from the top left downwards to bottom right. He attaches a magnifying glass to his spectacles. This means that to focus on his work he has to have his face within inches of the painting giving him a very small field of view. He completes this small field before moving on to another small field. In effect each painting consists of a number of tiny paintings that join to make a large painting. The painting is painted in a completely abstract manner as the artist doesn't see what the whole looks like until he takes off his magnifying glass and stands back.
Bob has also written an illustrated booklet about the Northern Pennines. His work has aroused much interest, being featured in the press and on television. He has work in many private collections throughout the world including Durham University. In 1987 he was commissioned to paint two water-colour paintings for HRH. Prince Charles. He is a member of MENSA, and is mentioned in 'Who's Who in Art'
