Jonathan Christie

Born: 1969
Place of Birth: London

Jonathan Christie is an artist and designer whose work is inspired by the landscapes and interiors of England, most notably Sussex, Suffolk, Wales and Cornwall.

Jonathan trained at Maidstone College of Art in Kent. He has exhibited extensively throughout Britain, including at The Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, Essex and The Rowley Gallery in Kensington, London.

Christie’s paintings are all inspired by real places and objects, but in the memory, reimagined, conflated, obscured and elucidated. His technique is the clear handmaid to the evocation of what he himself describes as, “a personal Genius Loci, that asks us to contemplate and look beneath the surface.”
Deploying watercolour, graphite and sgraffito on a gesso board, he will incise, distress, glaze and wash, but always guided by the powerful impulse of drawing. In this way the paintings emerge from change and development, traces of their genesis apparent at completion.
A ceramic dog is reanimated by the poetic congruity of its appearance in front of the Southwold lighthouse; Orion’s shape is traced onto a moon-lit compotier of lemons; a marbled cup lends its pattern to a winding coastal path. These are the charms of Christie’s vision, at once incisive and delicate, the working of imagination on memory. Christina Jansen, 2019

Jonathan Christie was the subject of a solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in December 2019 called Sky Sea Land. To find out more and view a catalogue, please click here.