Tim Storrier, who shares the spotlight, has a propitious combination of imagination and talent. Storrier’s works are romantic surrealist paintings full of fantasy and literary passages. The catalogue includes a bloodstained piece of gauze which Storrier says if “Delacroix’s handkerchief”, and certainly what North Africa was to Delacroix, the desert is to Storrier.
Storrier’s identification with Delacroix leads him to say, with some tongue in cheek, that he thinks he is fighting the same battle as Delacroix, against classicism – e.g. hard-edge abstraction.
The paintings are thematically explored. Originally the artist wrote a poem to accompany the paintings, which was the story of a wounded messenger going into the desert and never returning. In the end he felt that the paintings did not need the literary addition, which is correct.
They are hauntingly pretty paintings that seem to have the artist’s own spell cast over them. Snakes dream silent dreams and “wish they could walk”. Remnants of tents and flags, ruins and campsites speak of some dead or past glories. There is no human voice to break the silence of the sand and sky in Storrier’s exotic paintings.