Artist’s paintings are inspired by familiar faces

The Bad & The Beautiful, a new exhibition by Colin Wilson, encompasses the timeless style and elegance of the era with icons including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Humphrey Bogart.

It is on display at RedHouse Originals, in Cheltenham Mount, Harrogate, until the end of January next year.

The exhibition marks the artist’s foray into collage, initially inspired by an attempt to make a stop motion film.

Mr Wilson said yesterday: “I had the idea of using black and white print outs of film stars along with copious amounts of cardboard and wire to create a very basic stop motion animation. Having absolutely no experience in this department it wasn’t a very straightforward process and as a defeated man I soon took it back to the easel.”

Each painting combines collaged elements with abstract hand painted backgrounds, created to replicate the film sets or scenes specific to each character. The new works have been so successful that many of the images will inform future large scale compositions by the artist.