Chris Silver
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→ Juxtapoz Magazine - 'The Work of Chris Silver' (2013)
→ Vogue Magazine - 'Vogue' by Chris Silver (2016)
→ Basement Magazine (2015)
→ Fresh Paint Magazine (2020)
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→ The Art Department, "The Big Art Show", Paisley, 2024
→ Glasgow Art School Union, Glasgow, 2014
→ Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Degree show, 2017
→ SWG3, Glasgow, 2017
→ Gallery Grace, Bristol, 2024-2025
→ The Evac, NYC, 2023
→ Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow, 2022
→ Paulin Watches, Edinburgh, 2020
→ Colorida Galeria de Arte, Lisbon, 2022
→ Agora Gallery, New York City, 2015
→ Brick Lane Gallery, London, 2015
→ Oxfam group exhibition – Wilson Davies Fine Art, 2012
→ Williamwood, National Advanced Higher Exhibition, 2012
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Contemporary 'pop expressionist' based in Scotland, from Glasgow. I studied at the Glasgow School of Art specialising in Painting & Printmaking as a Bachelor of Honours attained in 2017.
My work explores the emotional connotations of colour, composition and mark making. I am strongly influenced by movements such as Fauvism, Post Impressionism, Neo Classism, Expressionism and Pop Art. I am also interest in the Scottish Colourist Movement, and consider my work could be a contemporary take on this.
Within my practice, I have an interest in Art Psychotherapy and psychology. My late mother was a psychiatrist and helped many people, as someone with mental health illnesses, I found art to be highly therapeutic and a sensory, meaningful experience; where a painting of someone was almost like reading them and making a portrait that captures their soul. The work I do often has different styles and mediums depending on mood and atmosphere and my emotional response to the subject matter.
As a contemporary Scottish painter and illustrator whose work is rooted in a personal investigation of psychology, mental health and emotion; I am informed by recent art history and a sound understanding of art psychotherapy; this duality informs my layered, multidisciplinary and introspective practice. My work draws from heart to hearts and deep conversations with my late mother, a psychiatrist, whose influence continues to shape my approach to depicting affective states, mainly anxious and manic states.
The visual language of the work merges elements from abstract expressionism, post-impressionism, and pop art into a hybrid form that I refer to as “pop expressionism.” I often focus on the human face—not as portraiture, but as an emotional terrain to be disrupted, reassembled, and translated through colour and mark making. My painting process is instinctual and emotionally driven, guided by a sensibility that favours spontaneity, tactile texture, and expressive gesture. With roots in both fine art and therapeutic practice, my work becomes a visual dialogue between internal experience and public expression, where colour and surface function as proxies for emotional depth.
Working primarily in oil paint and mixed media, my paintings are distinguished by their thick, textured surfaces, dynamic brushwork, and layered application of colour. Often, the paintings are presented as fragmented faces that are rendered in impasto strokes, intersected by diagonal knife marks that fracture and visually destabilise the composition. With rich, bold, dreamlike and sometimes haunting choice of colour; gestural swaths of dark pigment, with flashes of intense chroma breaking the surface, evokes a mood and atmosphere of bafflement and vulnerability. These works show the ability to channel psychological states through the formal language of painting—each portrait is not fixed in identity, but fluctuates with emotion which are expressed, aesthetically through visual elements such as mark making and colour.
Across my oeuvre, I use the body, particularly the face, as a site of emotional inscription, often breaking down and reconstructing forms through expressive colour and erratic mark making. My work recalls the urgency of neo-expressionism, the physicality of Jenny Saville, and the colour sensibility of the Scottish Colourists and Fauvism. While rooted in art history, my canvases have a contemporary voice, capturing the tensions of living with mental distress and anguish in the turbulent, modern age. The paintings are not only images to look at but also spaces to feel—visceral and disorienting, they invite viewers into an experience of empathy and reflection, something to be looked at for a long period of time; if it sparks emotion and inquiry in the viewer, then the art has meaningful purposd
What distinguishes my practice is the way I fuse technical ability with psychological sensitivity through assimilation of materials. My paintings are not simply expressive; they are also acts of inquiry into how emotion, memory, and instability can be rendered visible through things such as brush strokes. By resisting aesthetic, visual polish in favour of authenticity and honesty, the work leads to vital dialogue within contemporary painting—one that embraces complexity, celebrates vulnerability, and challenges the boundaries between personal and universal experience. My work offers a powerful reminder that art can be both a site of catharsis and exploration.
