About

Abstract painting provides me with a language that is deeply felt yet reflective, spontaneous yet crafted.

Statement

My paintings are structured but loose, with some unexpected and surprising details. Surface disruptions give each painting a robust and individual character. While working in a broad tradition of gestural abstraction, I take care not to be heavy-handed. I hope that people find in my paintings contrasts that satisfy without being too easily balanced. Rigour and sensuousness, intuition and objectivity, delight and struggle are visible in the material possibilities of colour, texture and tonal contrast. I let a painting go when it becomes itself: eliciting a heightened and contemplative response in the viewer.

Biography

Alan Everett mainly produces abstract works on canvas and heavy paper. Overpainting, layering and variations in texture witness to the process of production. He paints quickly to allow organic forms to emerge: open-ended and surprising. Larger scale works present a dynamic field for the viewer to contemplate and enter. He has painted for over forty years, largely exhibiting in churches and cathedrals. Locations have included St Michael London Fields, St Andrew Holborn, Guildford Cathedral, St Stephen Walbrook and All Saints West Dulwich. He has recently retired from full-time employment as an Anglican priest.

Writing:

Following the Grenfell Tower fire, in September 2017 The Guardian published a long poem by Alan Everett. This was followed in 2018 by a memoir and theological reflection, as the vicar of the Grenfell parish: After the Fire: Finding words for Grenfell.