Bayley Nude II by Ron King.

Bayley Nude II, blind-embossed print from a copper wire sculpture. One of an edition of 50, numbered, titled and signed in pencil by the artist, this is #10/50.

size 30 x 43cm.

ronkingstudio.com

Please check out his website for more information and available works.

Ron King has had an artistic life that spans a multi faceted and inspiring 60 years.  His iconographic work is marked by a distinctive, fresh and often pioneering approach. As an artist his work can’t be pinned down to by genre but it does have an approach that is hallmarked by a distinctively curious, questioning and energetic approach.

Born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1932, Ron still has a strong attachment to the country and its culture.  At the age of 12 he became fascinated with the macabre photograph that he saw in a book of his father’s of the decapitated heads of the infamous bandit leader Lampião and his notorious band.  An image that he still can’t quite let go of today and one that has informed a long exploration which you can find expressed in much of his work to do with masks and character.  Sent to England in 1945, Ron attended Ardingly College in West Sussex and in 1951 he went on to gain entrance to Chelsea School of Art.

Ron picked up a scholarship at Chelsea for his painting and then several art awards when he emigrated to Canada, with his wife and sculptor Willow Legge in 1956.  Here he worked as an art director in McLean Hunter publishing house.  In 1960 Ron returned to the UK with his family to paint for his first one-man show in Toronto.  In 1961 while teaching at Farnham School of Art he took up printmaking, which led to a contract in 1964 with the well known print publishers Editions Alecto.  Unable to publish his first book ‘The Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ with them, he followed through the project himself and formed Circle Press.