Chris Cyprus – British artist paints allotments

Mr Rotervator by Chris Cyrus.

Chris Cyprus
Born April 1971, Gorton, Manchester.

“I read somewhere recently that digging potatoes is like unearthing buried treasure and the excitement of watching your own vegetables grow brings the child spirit out of us.

“This is similar to the thrill of opening new tubes of paint, and starting a fresh canvas and not really knowing what the finished product will become. After your last crop before winter sets in, there is the exciting process of planning what to do with next years crop, and where you are going to plant it.

“Its exactly the same process with painting, you have a basic outline plan of your composition, but like nature, something takes over the finishing process and you become like a third party onlooker, only helping it along to completion. This is the journey that all painters must make to become artists.”

Free Range by Chris Cyprus

From his website Allotment Art

What started out as a year long project has now become an addiction resulting into more than 50 paintings depicting ‘Life on the Allotments’ and an obsession that ended up with Chris getting his own plot!

It all started with the humble Garden Shed and old rustic Garages, ‘I was fascinated with the textures and colours and to what was inside these time capsules’. This lead Chris to the Allotments where he found inspiration and was overwhelmed by the passion and pride that people had for their plots.

Chris also wanted to carry out more figurative studies, but wasn’t sure how to introduce them into his Landscapes, then after a holiday in Provence in 2006, Chris spent some time in Arles where Van Gogh painted local Farm Workers and other local people. So when Chris first visited the allotments he instantly knew how he wanted to portray these people, “there was a certain humour that was typically British in the characters that I met, almost cartoon-like, which also influenced the style in the way i wanted to capture them”

Woodsmoke by Chris Cyprus

See Chris Cyprus’ art here at Allotment Art website.

Also see Chris Cyprus’ art here at his personal website.

BBC Video: Survivor’s paintings popular

Having survived two bouts of cancer and witnessing the horror of 9/11, Chris Cyprus’s paintings are taking the art world by storm.
Link to short video. (15 second advertisement at start.)