Paintings

THE LIONTAMER’S CHAIR

86cms x 61cms / 33¾” x 24”
acrylics on canvas

Paul Yates painted single chairs as far back as 1974. The unique nature of a lion tamer’s chair holds a strong fascination for him. Yates’s poem of the same title further explores the concept.

 Lord Glentoran

Light
As a feather, could be lifted
With a little finger, the loop
Of its back broken open in a
Frozen whiplash, its legs
Scarred with claw and bite
Marks; Its seat given up, for
A lady in the audience?

                                      P.Y.

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

LAST SUPPER

77cms x 61cms / 30¼” x 24”
acrylics on canvas

This painting was made in response to a true story. A donkey isolated in remote countryside during winter sought shelter in a derelict cottage. Hungry, the animal entered the bedroom and pushed its head through the bars of a bedstead, tore open the worn straw mattress beyond with its teeth and ate the contents. Tragically the donkey’s head became trapped between the bars and it was unable to escape. The following spring the animal’s petrified corpse was discovered, still standing, with its head held fast between the bars of the bedstead.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

DE CHIRICO’S GHOST

127cms x 102cms / 50” x 40¼”
acrylics on canvas

A reference to Giorgio de Chirico the Italian painter who strongly influenced the early surrealist movement. The figure in this painting appeared to the artist in a dream and claimed to be the ghost of De Chirico, growing younger every day and showing off with tricks of the light.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

REACHING FOR THE MOON

60.5cms x 50.5cms / 23¾” x 19¾”
acrylics on canvas

This painting concerns an old English folk tale. A group of villagers idiots gathered on a bridge over a river at night observe the reflection of the moon in the water and believe the moon to have fallen from the sky. They form a human chain to stretch down and rescue the moon. Just as they get within reach, the anchor man on the bridge advises the others to ‘hold tight’ while he raises his arms to relieve cramps in his shoulders.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MARINE TATTIE-BOGLE

50cms X 69.5cms / 20” X 27½”
acrylics on canvas

A scarecrow observed on the coast of the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland. The light playing off the sky and ocean setting the figure centre stage in that massive drama of wind and wave power that empowers the stuff of legends and folklore. Tattie-Bogle figures have featured in Yates’s poetry and his short story of the same name was recorded at the BBC by Gail Porter.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE REAL KENDO NAGASAKI

29.5cms x 29.5cms square / 11¾” x 11¾” framed smaller
painted collage

Painted collage alluding to the persona/s of British masked wrestler, Kendo Nagasaki. Yates and Nagasaki collaborated on various projects on terms of strict mutual confidence. In conversation with Paul Yates I have sensed his strong existential link to the non-physical persona of Nagasaki. This and other phenomenological and Kabbalistic aspects led to a truly fascinating creative partnership resulting in the critically acclaimed BBC Arena film ‘MASTERS OF THE CANVAS.’  See BBC iPlayer.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE DRIPPING SNOWMAN

150cms X 101.5cms / 59” x 39¾”
acrylics on canvas

From the KLIN series, an Inuit word meaning ‘remembered snow.’ Yates began painting snowheads and snowmen in 2002. Such figures are familiar to us, indeed the process of making them is likely the one deliberate act of sculpture making most of us have engaged in at one time or another. Yates’s snow figures offer us a way of rediscovering these figures, seeing them as individual entities often with distinct personality characteristics and mirroring various aspects of the human condition. This work depicts a snowman caught in the fury of a snowstorm, almost phantom like he is manifested within the very substance and chaos from which he originated.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

NO TALKING II.

120cms X 240cms / 48” X 96”
acrylics on canvas

From the TABULA RASA series inspired by the following incident. When a young teenager Yates was expelled from high school for writing two poems during a mathematics examination instead of answering the questions. Before leaving school he was forced to write on a blackboard one hundred times, I must not write poetry in class. A week or so later the poems concerned were broadcast on BBC Radio and Yates was reinstated at his high school. This painting features a blackboard struck by prisms of sunlight revealing the ghost writings of previously erased lessons re-imagined with something of the spirit of illuminated medieval manuscripts.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

RORSCHACH OBSERVES LUCIFER BREAKING HIS FALL UPON A RAINBOW

101.6cms x 152.4cms / 39¾” x 59¾”
painted collage/mixed media on Arches 300lb watercolour rag

A masterly orchestration of, colours, tones and textures across a variety of medias to create a stunning harmony of effects. A Rorschach ink blot snapshot of the legendary fall of the ‘light bearer’ Lucifer. I sense the scale and drama of Milton’s Paradise Lost [a poet much respected by Yates.] and curiously, Lascaux tones, as if the bearing of silent witness to a cosmic event by a primitive mind. Nightmare, dreamtime and other such terms seem very fitting to associate with this intriguing work which rewards close study with constant surprises.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS

triptych, each portrait 61cms x 61cms / 24” x 24”
acrylics on canvas

These paintings were inspired by a postcard the artist’s daughter bought when she visited Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, in the U.S.A. The card featured plaster heads employed by three prisoners in 1962 to fool guards into thinking they were asleep in their bunks when they were actually in the process of escaping. Yates has built on these forms to create a triptych of compelling classic portraits labelled with each prisoner’s penitentiary I.D. numbers and the dates of their original incarceration.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MAN DRAWING CHALK CIRCLES

101.5cms x 76.3cms / 40” X 30”
acrylics on canvas

Inspired by the artist’s observation of a man in the town of St. Andrews in Scotland drawing chalk circles in the middle of Market Street. Moving along the street the man would occasionally stop and seem to take reference from the first-floor windows of shops before crouching down again to draw more chalk circles. His mysterious behaviour seemed like some kind of performance art. What the man was actually doing was marking the positions for the huge metal feet of mechanical fair ground rides that would be set up for the annual Auld Lammas Fair. The clearance for such rides being estimated by the man’s memories of previous years’ set-ups and their ‘swing’ proximity to first floor windows.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE CHILDREN OF GORT

triptych, each portrait 61cms x 45.7cms / 24″ x 18″
mixed media on boards

Inspired by the robot GORT from the 1951, 20th Century Fox film, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. The triptych portrays GORT’s imagined children, all named after the control words, Klaatu, Barada, Nikto, spoken to GORT in the film to prevent him destroying the Earth. Whilst all three portraits are made in the likeness of GORT, each subtly suggests an individual personality.

 Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE CHALK MONITOR

123cms x 76cms / 48½” x 30”
acrylics on canvas

A memory from the artist’s primary school days. One of three pupil trustees, the others being the Ink Monitor and Milk Monitor. The Chalk Monitor had the job the artist most envied; the ritual cleaning of the blackboard with a cloth and small bowl of water and was permitted to stand on a chair to reach the top of the blackboard and handle the giant wooden compasses, ruler and set square that rested on either side.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MIS-COUNTED HAIKU

51cms x 40.5cms / 20” x 16”
acrylics on board

Seemingly random blots and splashes of colour choreographed about the traditional format of a school exercise book page. Reminiscent of flower petals fallen by a summer wind to scatter into positions by chance they offer a visual metaphor for the process of creating haiku. This painting featured on the front cover of Yates’s recently released collection of haiku, LE MOT JUSTE.

  Lord Glentoran

£6,000

Studio Price

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE HAPPY COUPLE

122cms x 183cms / 48” x 72”
acrylics on canvas

This painting depicts a mock wedding ceremony between two children witnessed by the artist when at kindergarten. The bold use of heavy charcoal is reminiscent of children’s crayon drawing and sets the tone of this work.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

SHAPE-SHIFTER TRIO

92cms X 92cms / 36” X 36”
acrylics on canvas

Inspired by the artist’s chance encounter with scarecrow figures on the Ards Peninsula In Northern Ireland. Created from baling polythene, twine and plastic bags, once animated by the wind these figures took on the appearance of living things within the landscape.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

ANONYMOUS SCORE FOR AEOLIAN SYMPHONY

92cms x 183cms / 36” x 72”
diptych – acrylics on canvas

Inspired by the artist’s chance encounter with scarecrow figures on the Ards Peninsula In Northern Ireland. Created from baling polythene, twine and plastic bags, once animated by the wind these figures took on the appearance of living things within the landscape.

In this case baling polythene snared on barbed wire fencing and brought to life by the wind takes on a new life as a constantly changing musical score.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE CROW QUEEN

77cms X 102cms / 30” x 40”
acrylics on canvas

Inspired by the artist’s chance encounter with scarecrow figures on the Ards Peninsula In Northern Ireland. Created from baling polythene, twine and plastic bags, once animated by the wind these figures took on the appearance of living things within the landscape.

The random placing of a cloak of black polythene and tarred baling twine about a fence post creates a distinctive member of the royal family of the fields.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MAN WALKING THROUGH WALL

sextet – each panel 91cms X 122cms
overall 274cms x 244cms / 108″ x 96″
acrylics on canvas

The seemingly impossible act of walking through a physical wall is a metaphor for the challenges of the human condition. The figure is not rendered completely free of the wall, bringing to mind a phrase of Samuel Beckett’s concerning the creative process often quoted to me by Paul Yates, ‘fail again, fail better…’

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

POTHEAD, RONDA

102cms x 76cms / 40” x 30”
acrylics on canvas

Ronda in Spain was a vital crucible for Yates’s imagination. Its light, scale and distances, inspired the series, THE ANDALUSIAN EFFECT. This painting portrays a scarecrow figure encountered on the road from Ronda to Marbella. A worn woolly jumper speckled with what might be dirt and flies formed the body, the arms were made from polythene sleeving that filled with air from the slightest wind and waved away the birds, the head was an upturned old black cooking pot, an irreverent crown for a king of the plains.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

NOSMO KING

91.5cms x 71cms / 36” x 28”
acrylics on canvas

As young children the artist and his friends would attend their local cinema. Always short of money only one of them would buy a ticket and enter. After sitting for a while the ticket holder would go to the toilet and push open the fire doors to let in the rest of their friends free of charge. At the end of a screening they would rush as a group to exit through the same fire doors, bursting out of the darkness into the broad daylight. Viewed from outside the wide-open fire doors bore the words NOSMO on the left door and KING on the right door. The children imagined the words to be the name of the owner of the cinema, creating the mythical character NOSMO KING. When the doors were closed and viewed from inside the words written across both doors appeared as NO SMOKING.

  Lord Glentoran

£8,000

Studio Price

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

WHAT MY GRANDMOTHER SAID WOULD HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU ATE THE SEEDS FROM AN APPLE CORE

183cms x 122cms / 60” x 48”
acrylics on canvas

A piece of family folklore to discourage the eating of seeds that might cause stomach aches or worse. Within the fertile imagination of a child this folklore grew into a surreal vision.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

WOMEN BEHIND SHOWER CURTAIN

100cms x 100cms / 39” X 39”
acrylics on canvas

Two ghostly female figures behind a watery veil of steam and condensation that suggests both sanctuary and exposure. A nebulous floating world in which these cloud maidens appear in and out of focus simultaneously.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

WINDOW BLIND MARBELLA

triptych 30cms x 180cms / 12” X 72”
acrylics on canvas

In this study of a window blind in the Old Town of Marbella, Yates has isolated the bottom section of a worn, sun, sea and star seasoned window blind into a long narrow composition of three separate parts, effectively turning the blind into a landscape in its own right and capturing a distinct flavour of the mood and spirit of the locale.

  Lord Glentoran

Works are framed with plain gilt battens to protect their physical integrity, professionally crated, insured and made ready for dispatch by Royal Mail services. Purchasers will be advised of these costs in advance and are responsible for any relevant import duties or like that may apply.

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

FALLING ANGEL THROWS A SHOE

52.5cms x 39cms
mixed media assemblage on wood

A stunning example of successful objets trouvés. Found in a disused army barracks, the studded sole of this shoe has been enhanced and set in a miniature cosmos with other found objects orbiting about it. One can imagine the sparks that once flew from these studs on parade ground drills but here it has been totally reinvented with a brilliant leap of imagination.

 Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MADONNA AND CHILD

56cms x 66cms
acrylics, cement and collage on canvas

The reworking of a car park icon from an E.Leclerc supermarket in the south of France yields a modern version of this classic subject with surprising emotional depth. Also featured is a section from an E.Leclerc freezer bag, signed and dated by a check-out operator as proof of purchase, echoing signed limited fine art editions.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

TATTIE-BOGLE

61cms x 51cms
acrylics on canvas

In dusty potato skin and sack tones this portrayal of a Scottish scarecrow, after a story by Paul Yates, deftly depicts the mystery and solitude of such figures as they stand guard over crops in all kinds of weather. The device of a broken tractor number plate, one half upside down, distinguishes the figure and is a reference to a passage from the bible, Hebrews 132, advising that strangers should be treated with kindness as one may be entertaining angels unawares.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

FIREWORKS

120cms x 180cms
painted assemblage on canvas

Inspired by a poem written by Yates’s daughter, Kelly, when she was nine years old. This challenging portrayal of the legendary Titanic ocean liner reveals the vulnerability of any craft, however large or well-engineered, on the open sea. The positioning of a small scaled model, inconspicuously, in the bottom right-hand corner of this large heavily painted canvas depicts the Titanic as little more than a bath time toy on the huge swell and vastness of the ocean and the night. The Titanic fired distress flares before sinking but distant ships mistook them for a fireworks display. Yates portrays the ephemeral nature of these flares with individually coloured dandelion aigrettes.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

A DRESSING ROOM MIRROR FOR HELENE VANEL

76.5cms X 61.5cms
painted collage/assemblage on canvas

Imagined for Helene Vanel, a surrealist dancer who set up her theatre in Saint-Paul de Vence in 1928. A misty portrait of Vanel as a ghostly vision flanked by items tucked into the frame or stuck onto the mirror; Valentine postcards from the period, semaphore cards spelling VANEL and playing cards showing bullet holes and fixed with a vintage ten thousand Franc Monte Carlo casino chip. A reservation card for a romantic dinner at Le Tilleul in Saint-Paul bearing a lipstick kiss, the iconic emblem of Maison Godet revealed by pencil cross-hatching.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

A FOOL PROOF SYSTEM FOR WINNING AT ROULETTE

76.5cms x 62cms
painted collage/assemblage

Rings from the bases of champagne, spirit, wine and cocktail glasses in various colours of acrylic paint are juxtaposed with a wide variety of objects some of which may be lucky charms, vintage Monte Carlo casino chips, crude measuring and counting devices forlornly fielded to impose pattern on blind chance.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

WHOSE MOVE? I

25.5cms X 30.5cms
painted assemblage

An over a century old book cover, ruled and dressed for a solo player board game with tin, bone and ivory counters. An enigmatic moment from a game we can never know the rules for or whose turn it is to play.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

WHOSE MOVE? II

30.5cms X 40.5cms
painted assemblage

An over a century old book cover, ruled and dressed for a solo player board game with ancient Roman coins. An enigmatic moment from a game we can never know the rules for or whose turn it is to play.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

WHOSE MOVE? III

30.5cms X 40.5cms
painted assemblage

An over a century old book cover, ruled and dressed for a solo player board game with German 1930’s coin tokens, draughts pieces and a single blue button. An enigmatic moment from a game we can never know the rules for or whose turn it is to play.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

A MAGIC SEXTANT

58.5cms x 39cms
painted assemblage

Looking like they were made for each other; A coat hanger, tin opener, horse chestnut, random wood and clock hand, combine to create a navigational instrument for charting journeys of the imagination. Written on a fragment of a wooden cable drum are the latitude and longitude coordinates for Saint-Paul de Vence.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

PAL JOEY

diptych, each portrait 61 cms x 51cms
acrylics on canvas

Based on photo-booth photo-strip portraits of a ventriloquist doll belonging to a busker in Cannes. One portrait showing Pal Joey calm and collected, one showing him startled by the photo-booth flash.

  Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE SHY ROBOT

30cms x 15cms / 12″ x 6″”
acrylics on canvas

This small work from the LEGION series took eleven years to complete. Like many of Yates’s paintings it was visited from time to time for tiny enhancements or to be left alone for a further period until just the right mark making could be executed.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THE INK MONITOR

31cms x 24 cms / 12″ X 9″”
blotting paper collage and vintage inks on 1950’s trade desk blotter

A pen and drip ink portrait of the pupil from the artist’s primary school entrusted with the alchemical process of mixing a tiny tin of Stephens’s blue black ink powder in a pint jug of water, stirring it thoroughly with a wooden knitting needle for sixty seconds, then leaving it to set for five minutes before passing solemnly around the classroom to fill the ink well on each desk.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

THOREL THRASHER THROPP

127cms x 102cms / 50″ x 40″”
acrylics on canvas

The title of this work is the rumoured alias the artist L.S.Lowry would adopt when approached by autograph seekers or asked to sign some casual sketch he may have dashed off. One source claims Lowry went as far as having calling cards printed in this name.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

REAR WINDOW

46cms x 63.5cms / 18″ x 25″”
acrylics on canvas

Alec Leamas, the main protagonist of the novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, by John Le Carre, recalls observing two juggernaut trucks pull out and converge on a station wagon driving down the middle of a road. As Leamas passed beyond the event his last sight of the station wagon was that of children laughing and waving from the rear window before the moment of impact. For Leamas the juggernauts represented communism and capitalism, the children the innocents caught in between. Yates has sought to capture this moment of innocence before the fatal impact with simple shapes and tones frozen behind a misted rear windscreen.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

BILLIARDS AT BOODLES

35.5cms x 45.5cms / 14″ x 18″”
painted assemblage

A superbly compact recollection of the artist playing billiards at my London club, Boodles in St. James, the oldest club in London. Paul Yates introduced members to the wonders of full and half-ball reverse banana screw and other trick shots. The subtle abstractions of this assemblage perfectly capture the spirit of that wonderful evening.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

SEEING IN THE DARK

52cms x 52cms / 20″ X 20″”
acrylics on canvas

Observed by the artist in a church in Donegal many years ago, an imprint in dust of a dove that had collided with a window pane then fallen to its death outside. The curious aspect was that when viewed from the church interior during strong sunlight the image of the dove could not be discerned, it was only when a cloud passed over or the day grew darker that the ‘dust dove’ could be discerned.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

CHILDREN CROSSING

63.5cms x 46cms / 24′ X 18″”
acrylics on canvas

An image from ROAD MARKINGS, a new series in development by Yates exploring faded highway and car park iconography.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

YELLOW MEN WALKING IN RAIN

46cms x 63cms / 24″ x 18″”
acrylics on canvas

An image from ROAD MARKINGS, a new series in development by Yates exploring faded highway and car park iconography. Night time rain and neon flare illuminated these two walking men figures, their crumbling paint imbuing them with a sense of drama, as if they were strolling out onto a stage.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MONSIEUR BRASSAU

63.5cmz x 46cms / 25″ x 18″”
acrylics on canvas

Pierre Brassau was a chimpanzee and the subject of a 1964 hoax when paintings made by him were exhibited as the work of an unknown French artist named, Pierre Brassau. Many critics praised the delicacy of Pierre’s strokes and colour orchestrations until his true identity was revealed, despite this some still found his work of merit. In 1969 Pierre retired to Chester Zoo in England.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

GHOSTS OF DEAD POETS STARTLED BY THEIR REFLECTION IN A MIRROR

46.5cms x 63.5 / 18″ x 24″”
acrylics on canvas

It is interesting to speculate who these poets may be. Several faces can be discerned intertwined with each other and study yields visualisations which offer us insights into how the artist developed this painting.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries:

MUTT’S GRACES

46cms x 63.5cms / 18″ x 25″”
acrylics on canvas, mixed media assemblage

Employing an almost architectural drawing style and placing the words MUTT WAS HERE on plain utilitarian bathroom tiles Yates has echoed Canova’s classical rendering of the Three Graces with a chorus line of urinals after the artist Marcel Duchamp’s infamous MUTT exhibit. Yates is never afraid to allow his viewer to join up the dots on his thinking, this work is daringly understated.

Lord Glentoran

Email for further information and purchase enquiries: