James Bamford Fine Art

this piece was my attempt to re-create Henri Matisse's "Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt" 2010 Acrylic on paper

i called this one "Neither Heaven nor Hell" first of all because of how it looks because neither side has a good side to how it looks, on the top is heaven shrowded in darkness and at the bottom is hell, as clear as day but the people sent there see nothing but a sky of fire. This was an accidental art piece that i was close to throwing away at first because i was randomly painting, I looked at it and thought it looked horrible so folded this, scrunched it up and it revealed this.

a photograph I took from a house where i used to live, the house overlooked a back street, i developed the photograph myself and scratched into the image to add a textured effect to the rough looking street.

During college I visited Southport for the first time and automatically I really liked the view of the pier when i saw how it looked like an ideal image for a painting. The reason i painted it in red and white was because that was the only colored paints that I had and wanted to experiment with this idea, there is nothing else behind why i did this and would do it with any other color. 2011 acrylic on canvas 30 x 25 cm

During my time at college I experimented with painting, I started out with no real intention of creating anything, just to experiment with painting. I realized that the colors looked interesting however could be improved somehow, i then began to add dark lines to break up the imagery, This is when I applied pieces of bamboo and also some sand and string which I then applied to this. 2010 mixed media 60 x 50 cm

A watercolor painting of a view of the valley looking down from Ingleton Waterfalls in Yorkshire. 2011 45 x 35 cm Watercolor on canvas

This still life painting was of the tape ball which i had been studying during my first year of university. 2011 Acrylic on canvas

This is a still life sketch of a ball of tape which i drew in my first year of university to begin a flow of ideas towards creating future art pieces. out of all of my first year pieces that I created, this was my favorite. I drew on parcel paper because I was interested in the texture which appeared to work out successfully. 2011 chalk and charcoal on parcel paper. 30 x 30 cm

This was based on a field study trip to the Barbara Hepworth exhibition at the Whitworth Wuseum in Wakefield. I was to go there and find something which I found interesting. This turned out to be a steel cage and a marble sculpture that i merged together, then drawing onto parcel paper again to create a stone like effect, it also helped when I crumpled up the paper and drew into each crease which gave the drawing some layers. 2011 chalk and charcoal on parcel paper 30 x 30 cm

A series of different art pieces which I created through the use of cutouts of magazines which I had used from a previous project, the Architectural magazine was intended to be used for collage however i did like the images within images idea, so I painted what I saw onto MDF wood. These were part of my first year exhibition. 2012 MDF Est. 60 x 30cm Acrylic On MDF

Automatic Painting. 2012 Est 30 x 30 cm Acrylic on MDF

In this image I liked the idea of using singular colors to create an interesting effect as i began to feel that too many colors made the image seem too chaotic and intense. I took a photograph of a whiskey bottle from above and painted what I saw, with this adding different tones to the image. 2012 Est 30 x 30 cm Acrylic on MDF

painting from ripped magazine pieces. 2012 Est 30 x 30 cm Acrylic on MDF

Automatic Painting. 2012 Est 30 x 30 cm Acrylic on MDF

I attempted to suspend razor blades from the ceiling and apply foam dripping down, from this I painted the scene in a fauvist manner. 2012 Est 30 x 30 cm Acrylic on MDF

This was the final painting I created, it was also another automatic painting. 2012 Est 90 x 90 cm Acrylic on MDF

I was experimenting with some new ideas such as carving into a bottle with a compass and the bottle fell over leaving a heart splat of ink on the desk, I placed my fingers next to the bottle which had ink on them, the reason for this title was due to my addiction to orange lucozade energy drinks and endless nights of drinking these throughout my first year of university, it came to a time when i had to kill an addiction which I relied so much.

For this, i drank whiskey for three nights in a row to "get a feel" of what i was researching into, my addiction idea inspired this and I realized that whiskey was an alcohol that a lot of people had talked about. It had a very strong and hard taste to it that made want to attempt to create an art form to show that people are drinking their lives away, with the use of ink and blue food colouring, I wanted to portray alcohol as a poisonous and deadly substance.

This was created after I visited Leicester, I visited the De Montfort univeristy in Leicester traced the Image onto six A4 pieces of acetate then also shading in dark areas, the negative spaces looked really and changed the atmosphere of the image entirely from a busy city to an empty post-apocalyptic scene. 2011 permanent marker on acetate Est 90 x 75 cm

This relates to my artwork of Leicester City Center as I wanted to try creating a larger image so i did the same process of finding something to photograph.This being a crank at the Barbican in Plymouth, then tracing the image and then I projected the image onto a wall. As i started drawing I realized that i was drawing around the lines rather than on them creating new images and shapes, I came to a point where I applied color and stopped. 2012 paper and permanent marker 9 x 3 ft

I continued developing my interest in working with lines, with my previous pieces I was unsatisfied, the art was always flat on the wall, I wanted something more visual and three dimensional. I came to the conclusion of using umbrellas because i began finding them everywhere after a windy day and most of them had appeared to be "broken". I salvaged the parts and threw them onto the floor to create a design, then began soldering them together. 2013 Steel Umbrella Pieces 75 x 75 cm

This was the first design that I created through the use of Photoshop, I became Inspired as I traveled to plymouth and took photographs of steam trains, dockyards and any small components that I could find, with this I then pieced them all together and created a machine which I thought looked like an 'engine'.

i call this motorcycle the wasp, with many different ideas combined together and the many photos i have gathered, it became a motorcycle. the colors and the background reminded me of a wasp in its hive. this motorcycle would be fast and deadly and hard to tame as it has a very big kick to it. it has a range of different images from hardware, steampunk, architecture and buildings, other transport as well as small connection devices which i found in machinery.

This Is a similar test to my first machine design, however instead of using train parts and heavy industry machine imagery i have focused on bicycle, motorcycle and power tools in a workshop as my main sources. I find it enjoyable to place pieces together to form what i would see as possible future technology ideas. I don't know what they do but thinking about the possibilities is exciting.

This was a similar experiment to 'engine however using parts from synthesizers and musical instruments to see if there was a different effect, in the outcome I thought that the image looked very much like a satellite.

This design that has been created is called Dragonfly based on its shape in similarity to that of a Dragonfly. I collected more imagery and began applying different parts to expand the image more. I considered this piece a part of my development towards the future but also artwork. 2013 Graphic design photo collage

This is a compilation of my other ideas merged into one which I named "Torso" due to its shape, which has become figurative. 2013 Graphic design photo collage

Typhoon was a tough name to come up with at first as I could not pin point a description for it, however this is all of my other Photoshop pieces in one big collaboration, I see this as a machine that would produce a lot of wind power, so I called it typhoon.

The description of radio and why I called it this is because of the small antenna looking part at the top right corner, also the dial at the bottom which I saw as a tuner.

This was my first experiment on grained wood which I used 6mm plywood, I also was experimenting with size and scale to see what sort of detail the cutter would produce if i was to shrink the vectors of the image.

This is the outcome of 'Engine' after creating the vectors and using the laser cutter to produce the work.

Using my edited image of "Torso", I traced the image using vector based software which I converted into Autocad and finally processed the outcome with the use of a laser cutter.

This sculpture is created from the leftovers of my laser cuts which i piece together using wood glue.

I do not know what to name this one as it has such a unique form to it, each time i look at it, the description changes, however it does remind me of a frog in sitting position. 2014 Plywood 30 x 28.5cm

for this, I laser cut onto black perspex while working with the material itself to create a sense of depth, a bit like a dark void or a black hole and small fragments flying about inside it's nothingness. it is the polar opposite to my black and white piece which I see as having more life to it, these two work really well together casting an effect of light and dark.

This is part of a seies which I allowed the lasercutter to travel outside of the square to create an image that had a feeling that there may be more. This reminded me a lot of kandinski's paintings. 2014 Plywood 8 x 8cm

The reason that I named this one 'Japanese curve' is because of its shape as it reminded me of the island of Japan, while the wood was being cut the laser sparks reminded me of lightning strikes as it hit at random locations, it made me think of severe weather conditions they encounter.

Black and White is one of my favourite pieces as it has lots of depth to it, I experimented the most with this by altering the cutter settings, at first the white perspex appeared bland and lost. This is when I applied chinese ink over the top to create strong and bold lines that made the image look more prominent, this was a very exciting piece to work with as I was unsure of the outcome after doing this.

I do not know how to explain this piece other than it started out as an accident due to the settings being too large on the lasercutting machine and it cut outside of the square, however I watched and experimented more by cutting and stopping mid way through, applying an etch to work with a full cut, it was successful and created a fragmented outcome.

Big Green has no statement to it, no reason why I used transparent luminecent green perspex, I simply wanted to try casting shadows, however it became more than this. I began cutting into this and the lines gave off an ominous glow, the deeper the cut the brighter the light, the image had some form of power to it, a presence, the original image for this is 'typhoon'.