Artist Spotlight: Andy Sylvester

Andy Sylvester is a painter based in Cheltenham. His practice centres painting as both a material and a way of thinking. "I'm a very painterly painter," he explains. "My paintings are as much about paint as a medium and a process as the subject I'm painting."

Andy’s subject matter comes from contemporary sources, mostly images found online. These might be selected for different reasons, such as colour, composition or light, and he stores them until he feels ready to work with them. Consent is an important part of his approach. Before using any image, he seeks permission from both the subject and photographer, where relevant.

The painting process itself is gradual and iterative. He often works on multiple paintings at once, allowing time for each to develop. He finds that taking things away can be as creative as adding them, removing elements he doesn’t like with an electric sander. In more recent works, he has started to leave the underlying grid visible, showing how the painting has been constructed.

A core theme in his work is masculinity, particularly within gay communities, and he explores a wide range of identities and representations. This includes different forms of presentation “that vary from very pretty boys in makeup, to very muscular men.” His recent work also includes a series based on drag queens.

Andy is particularly interested in the performance of identity, especially on social media. One early series called Felt Cute Might Delete Later was based on images from Twitter, influenced by a recurring caption used in posts. The intention was to take images that might disappear and give them a different form of permanence.

He links this to longer traditions of portraiture, stating “Social media doesn’t necessarily give you a true idea of what people look like. But that’s also what happened in portraits throughout history.”

He regularly exhibits his work, participating in group exhibitions, including a three-person exhibition in Amsterdam for World Pride this year. In some cases, he works with curators to develop specific pieces, for example painting new works in response to his favourite film Cabaret.

For his recent exhibition at Spring Gallery in Cheltenham, he brought together 67 artworks that he created over the last two years. This allowed him to think carefully about how the works are curated, using layout, lighting and signage to shape the experience. 

He spends a lot of time promoting his work online, meaning that three paintings had already sold before the show even opened. He recognises that his audience tends to be “a lot of gay men,” and “the leathermen works in particular will attract a very specific community.”

However, he noticed recently that more women have started buying his work, and he has built relationships with repeat collectors, explaining that “there are some people that own 6 or 7 of my paintings.”

One of Andy’s collectors found his work through the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The work was a 15cm square painting called Kyle with the Fabulous Eyes, based on the profile of a man from a small town in Canada.

Repeat purchases are in part due to the fact that he is a prolific painter and prices his work to be affordable to reach as wide an audience as possible. His audience also expands beyond the UK through his limited edition prints, which are distributed through platforms focused on LGBT+ art to Europe, Australia and America.

The scale of his work varies depending on how he wants to approach a subject at a given time. Some pieces are very small, allowing for concentrated detail and impact. At other times, he works on much larger pieces, although this is limited by the size of his studio.

However, most of his works are made at a domestic scale, suitable for display in the home. Accessibility is important to him, and he takes particular pleasure in seeing how his paintings become part of people’s everyday lives. As he explains, “One of the best things is when somebody sends me a photograph of one of my paintings on their walls.”

Andy Sylvester’s work is available to view and purchase at https://exhibtd.com/artists/andy-sylvester

Featured image: Andy Sylvester, Self portrait with red ear (detail), Acrylic on panel, 2021