Aldo Balding was born and raised in the United Kingdom and currently lives in the South of France. He started off his career as an illustrator before moving to France to become a full-time artist.
There is a narrative element to Balding’s work in which he sets up scenarios, with no specific outcome, leaving it up to the viewer to determine what is going on. He believes that the way a person holds their body can say more about their feelings and intentions, than words. His subtle use of space distortion creates a sense that something is amiss or is about to happen.
“Los Caracoles II”, oil on linen, 98x146cm
Living in the South of France, he likes to paint in direct sunlight. He prefers to be “stingy” in colour tones, using no more than five or six at any one time. The work normally has a predominant tone or key to it, usually in the mid or dark range. This means that more than 50 percent of the canvas is occupied by one or two closely related tones; this method has been used by great artists such as, Sargent, Sorolla, Zorn and Munnings. Balding considers himself a tonalist painter, though colour is another tool he likes to employ to influence mood. He looks for colour harmonies that already exist in the subject. He squints a lot when painting and this helps him to simplify everything, see things within a hierarchy- the sharpest edge, the lightest part, the order of things that he is searching for.
“La serveuse”, 46 x 55 cm , oil on linen
His inspiration, ideas and subject matter can originate from something he has seen- a man in a café, a woman crossing a street; or it can be an idea he has set up, where he has used a model, wearing something from his collection of clothes ranging from the 1940’s to the present day. The models act out an idea in his studio or on location rather than pose formally, which he then photographs during the ideas stage. He works quickly spending almost as much time on the set-up and ideas as the painting itself. A mid-sized painting normally takes between 2 to 3 days in an ‘alla prima’ style as he tries to work sections at a time to keep the ‘wet-in-wet’ technique.
Portrait of Darcey, 45 x 35 cm, oil on linen
“Los Caracoles”, oil on linen, 90cm x 130cm
Part of an essay by Ashraf Jamal —
“Light is at the core of Balding’s paintings, a light as visceral as it is psychological and metaphoric, a light which illuminates the world and banishes darkness. This seduction – the seduction of light – is also central to the work of all Balding’s inspirational artists. Without light, life is hollowed out, plunged into darkness. Without light, after Immanuel Kant, we cannot know ourselves, know others. The pursuit of light, therefore, is the reason for the artist’s journey. The quest for light is the artist’s emotional and ethical crux. Therefore to ‘know’ Aldo Balding’s paintings is to know the workings of light. Gaze upon any of Balding’s paintings and what immediately comes to the fore is a light through which we recognise a sentient strength, a spirited well-being, a sense of a world which, while fragile and stalked by threat, always harbours goodness and grace. As the American poet A.R. Ammons noted in his great poem ‘Corson’s Inlet’: ‘Risk is full, every living thing in siege / the demand is life / to keep life’. It is this principle and will which inspires Balding. And like Claude Monet and Joaquin Sorrolla he is well aware of the challenges that confront him in his attempt to cherish all that is sentient and good about life. As Monet once remarked, painting does not contain enough light. Sorolla concurred, stating that ‘We painters … can never reproduce light as it really is. We can only approach the truth of it’.
“La serveuse et le bouquin”, 50cm x 70cm, oil on linen
“la porte arrière”, oil on linen, 70cm x 50cm
Aldo Balding Instagram
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