MA Fine Art, City & Guilds of London Art School, 2021
At the centre of Andrew Szczech's practice is a response to the breakdown of structures – both physical and ideological. His paintings are built through a process of erosion and repair: gessoed surfaces are cracked open, layered with pigment, burnished, and then stilled. What remains is a kind of weathered skin – distressed, luminous, enduring. Recent paintings draw on fragments of late-Victorian wallpaper from the V&A archive. Alice Back Emerging Artist Award 2025.
My practice is an ongoing search for a unique visual language, rooted in the traditions of painting. I work with traditional techniques and materials, re-imagining them in contemporary ways. Most recently, I have been drawn to egg tempera. Working with a limited palette, I am fascinated by how a small number of pigments can remain endlessly intriguing. Surface is attacked and broken down, then polished, cherished, caressed, and cosseted. A sense of beautiful melancholy quietly pervades the work.