Billy Bagilhole
Having grown up surrounded by his father's paintings and prints, from a young age artist Billy Bagilhole drew cowboys and Indians, animals and religious figures, imitating the images that covered the walls of his childhood home. After his father passed away in 2001, when Billy was just 6 years old, those works continued to be of fascination. He often attributes his persistence within art to his father, explaining that this is why his empathy for mark-making, for creating, is so strong.
Billy predominantly works through the mediums of painting and filmmaking. Often covering canvases with salt and thick paint, he enjoys the technicality of painting, of colour and within the eye of the lens. Working frequently through internal gestures and hints of nostalgic representations of an abstracted life; often colliding colour with imagery of sinisterness. He feels that painting becomes an expressionistic form of understanding, and that by leaving the work as an open question, an unknown metaphor, the meaning within painting or filmmaking, within art itself, becomes infinite.
He states the attraction to painting is the ability to create the unknown, the unimaginable and the uncanny; forming a sense of bewilderment. With sequencing themes such as the often-seen fish bones, his reoccurring character "Edwin" or the bull, we begin to see a hint at the relationships between these often differentiated pieces of imagery. Billy believes we are inherently curious and that the pursuit of art offers an expression for this curious nature; making art becomes a medium for wonder, something unsolvable, a sensory koan that engages both artist and viewer.
Billy Bagilhole was born on the Lleyn Peninsula in the farthest reaches of North West Wales. He trained at Chelsea College of Art and now lives and works in London.