Chris Forsey RI

Chris is an elected member of The Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour (RI) and The Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA).

He is a self-taught painter, having begun his art career as an illustrator in a publisher's studio and endeavours to re-appraise his style and technique on a regular basis. This has led him towards a mixed-media approach to his work, combining watercolour, acrylic, pastel and gouache. Chris is exhilarated by colour and enjoys creating textured layers that allow hints of complementary hue to glow through, thus creating an exciting surface of scattered, broken colour.

He specialises in landscape subjects, exploring the themes of the man-made alongside the organic: buildings by water; structure emerging from a rocky cliff, sometimes with figures contributing to this theme, inhabiting the middle ground between buildings and the wildness of nature. He is inspired by coastal scenes of the UK and the Mediterranean, cafe life and townscapes. He tries to capture the sense of a place at a specific moment, season or time of day, always endeavouring to bring passion and immediacy to his work.

Chris was awarded the prestigious F Donald Blake Award for a contemporary watercolour in 2006 at the RI spring exhibition and also the Matt Bruce Memorial Award for light and colour at the 2007 RI exhibition.