This is the 3rd incarnation of this website and is intended as a showcase of my work for potential buyers, gallery owners, friends and well wishers.

Artist Biography

I've been an artist as long as I can remember. It started off with daubs of colour, pictures of soldiers shooting each other, and bubblegum factories.
As a child I constantly drew everything I could, whenever I could. I continued to do so as i got older and never stopped using art to express my feeling of being different and seeing things differently.
In my late teens i lacked the confidence to study art formally and instead continued to create under my own rules and visions. I never studied art formally because i was intimidated by the art world and my own feeling of not being a particularly good draughtsman, this was underlined by the attitudes of my teachers but i never felt discouraged about being creative, on the contrary, it liberated me to know i could just get on with being an artist without formal teaching.

My art is primarily about how I, and we, face the world as human beings and cope with the pressures that this THING we have created puts upon us.
One of my paintings is called 'Magical Journeys', and I feel that that title sums up what i want to do with my work. I want people to travel around the canvas and discover things, to find something new each time they look, and to share in my subconcious, my dreams, my visions.
The world moves at such a fast pace and we pile things around ourselves, objects, fashions, sensibliites, trends, material to try to fill the gap. I try in my paintings to get people to look in a mirror, and challenge their ideas about humanity and its place in the world.

Jonathan Ridley

Exhibitions/Features

1999-Phoenix gallery-Brighton Open exhibition
2001-2002-open house exhibitions in Brighton festival.
2002-organised and ran mural project at Brighton racecourse through ‘Sorted’ magazine project.
2003-exhibited as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival.
2004-Air Gallery-London. Winner of the Lexmark European Art Prize for the South East of the UK. ( Shortlisted down to the last 5 entries from over 4000 submissions )

2004-featured on BBC Southern Counties talking about my art, comics, and the West Pier.
2004-Featured in the Brighton Argus about my success in the Lexmark prize.2005-took part in ITV’s ‘A Brush with Fame’
2006- RAW arts festival Valencia-Color Elefante gallery.
2007-Earth and Stars gallery Brighton.
2007-Climate of Change exhibition-Union Street gallery, Southwark, London(organised through Londonart.co.uk)