Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Those Elsewhere readers who have seen our pages and reviews of the music of Leeds-based multi-discipline artist Chris Wade (who goes by the name Dodson and Fogg) know that we frequently refer to the cover illustrations by his partner Linzi Napier.
Her colourful paintings invite the viewer in, but also possess the suggestion of something else going on.
Many of her works capture an almost archetype of English terrace-housing architecture in Yorkshire and landscapes but have – to use Wordsworth's injunction – “a certain colouring of the imagination” brought to bear, “whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect”.
So the buildings in Napier's paintings glow more brightly than they do in the real world, the eye is taken to small detail, and the drabness of the ordinary is elevated to the realm of the magical.
Yet there is also a stillness at the heart of much of her work, a kind of strange silence which suggests other levels and lives beyond what she presents. In that regard her work has parallels in many of Chris Wade's songs, and tellingly she has co-written a number with him.
Napier is a self-taught artist but
acknowledges being inspired by her friend, the Edinburgh-based artist
Joneal Couban who in turn introduced her to Scottish
painter/multi-discipline artist Richard Demarco, both of whom were
very encouraging.
Napier has also designed a number of book covers, and co-wrote and illustrated The Cat Profiles with Wade (which came with an introduction by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson).
She has had a number of exhibitions in galleries in and around Leeds, and is currently working on a children's book, a subject she is qualified for by virtue of her previous work with children who had visual disabilities.
Elsewhere is pleased to introduce her art to our readers.
You can find more of it (and purchase prints) through her website here.
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