Red Riding Hood's Dark Side: Grimm’s Fairy Tales Art Of Christopher P Wood | GOLDMARK

“The Grimm’s fairy tales continue to inspire and renew themselves in the contemporary imagination, dealing, as they do, with those perennial and timeless matters of family, soul, justice, love, betrayal, redemption and the eternal conflicts of ethics and morality.” All works are available to buy and the accompanying catalogue contains an essay and poems by the award winning poet Ian Duhig. https://www.goldmarkart.com/collections/christopher-p-wood The Mercer Gallery in Harrogate is delighted to present a new collection of inventive paintings, collages and etchings by the widely acclaimed artist Christopher P Wood, inspired by the fascinating and often macabre fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. The show runs from 22nd January to 4th April 2025. https://www.goldmarkart.com/blogs/current-exhibitions/christopher-p-wood-at-the-mercer-gallery This film delving into Christopher P Wood’s fascination with the stories of the Brothers Grimm and features readings from of Ian Duhig poetry. It was only a year ago that Chris first proposed the idea of a new project reinterpreting the enduring tales of the Brothers Grimm. The mutable nature of stories told in the folk tradition, enlarged and enriched with each new telling, has always suited Chris’ generative way of working. Sure enough, after a short period of familiarisation, it did not take long for the images to start pouring forth, each work often quite literally birthing the next. Certain series (those luminous monotypes!) began to flow so freely that I wondered if Chris had made some Grimmian pact with a mountain- dwelling sorceress somewhere, but of course many of these images had already long been in gestation. Chris’ relationship with Red Riding Hood, for example, goes back at least two decades – probably further still, to the deepest reaches of his own childhood. The baldness of the Grimms’ tales, their frank and often cruel humour, reflect the precarious reality of working life in 19th century Westphalia, which the Grimm brothers knew all too well. Jacob, the older of the two, was just 11 when their father, a magistrate, died from pneumonia and the family became penniless overnight. Then, as now, poverty was only one random tragedy away. Their rise to the rarefied heights of literary academia was its very own not-quite-rags-to-riches transformation – but you have only to look at the forests and riverbanks that surrounded them to know that magic must have seemed a very real possibility in that place, just as it does in the shadows of Chris’ local stretch of woods. Extending this new series are Ian Duhig’s essay and poems, each as deep and dark and rich an excavation of the Grimms’ psyche as the images and tales they accompany. For his contribution to this project, I am extremely grateful. Max Waterhouse Born in Leeds in 1961, Christopher P. Wood is a painter and printmaker of atmospheric and enigmatic imagery. Wood’s work features magical, symbolic figures and signs, what the artist calls an exploration of the interior world of the imagination. He spends a great deal of time priming his canvases, often four times over, and builds his pictures in such a way that once begun each must be finished in a single sitting, an emotionally draining task to say the least. A family business, Goldmark have been selling art from our Gallery in Uppingham, UK for more than 50 years and hold over 50,000 items in stock. Explore a wide range of art, ceramics, sculpture, books, and DVDs all available to you through our website https://www.goldmarkart.com Goldmark Films is the Pro Moviemaker Filmmaker of the Year and four-times Royal Television Society Award nominated independent film making arm of the world-renowned Goldmark Gallery. It has been producing broadcast arts documentaries for over 20 years and has made 24 feature length documentaries and 100 plus shorts. Goldmark's global reputation allows it to gain intimate and revealing interviews with some of the world's leading artists, ceramicists, writers and critics. Its films on contemporary artists are complemented by a stable of programmes unveiling the fascinating life stories of both the famous and the forgotten painters, potters and sculptors of the 20th century. https://www.goldmarkart.com #grimmsfairytales #goldmarkart #littleredridinghood Grimm’s fairy tales,contemporary imagination,award winning poet,Christopher P Wood,Mercer Gallery,Harrogate,paintings,etchings,Brothers Grimm,printmaker,symbolic figures,UK exhibitions,magical imagery,canvas priming,Goldmark gallery,Goldmark art,Cinderella,Snow White,Hansel and Gretel,Little Red Riding Hood,Rumpelstiltskin,The Frog Prince,The Twelve Brothers,The Fisherman and His Wife,The Brave Little Tailor,The Golden Goose,Grimm's Fairy Tales