"Painting channels my feelings and my aggression," he says. "I live to paint and if I didn't paint I would be in a bad way." The evidence is all around us, everything from grotesque, childlike self portraits to delicately crafted seascapes crammed onto the limited wall space of his Leiston High Street shop. The sea paintings which he says sell very well but aren't his favourite to do are a benign contrast to the turbulence of much of his work
(b. 1961)
Chris Newson
Born in Saxmundham, Chris saw his mother leave at the age of four and his father died when he was just six. He went to live with grandparents who struggled to look after him, he says. He developed a stutter and was bullied at school, ultimately leaving with virtually no qualifications and going through a long period of drink and drugs. Painting he says began "When I was under Her Majesty's Pleasure" and the therapy, the drive to paint and produce art is what keeps him going today.
"Painting channels my feelings and my aggression," he says. "I live to paint and if I didn't paint I would be in a bad way." The evidence is all around us, everything from grotesque, childlike self portraits to delicately crafted seascapes crammed onto the limited wall space of his Leiston High Street shop. The sea paintings which he says sell very well but aren't his favourite to do are a benign contrast to the turbulence of much of his work.
The celebrated Suffolk artist Maggi Hambling has become Chris Newson's mentor and, he says, his inspiration. Maggi Hambling rates his work "because of its emotional charge. These paintings mean something. There is an urgency in them which takes you on a journey through this imaginary landscape."
A case in point on one of the crowded walls of his small shop is a new series of paintings generically entitled A Winter's Tale. The paintings are awash with white (perhaps inevitably), but also vibrant dabs of red – the hearts again – blue, green and orange and a series of semi-hidden figures which can be seen or missed depending on how you are looking at the painting. The journey Maggi Hambling describes can be different for every viewer. Even the title of the series perhaps travels back to Newson's career as an actor and the Shakespearean roles he played at the Maddermarket in Norwich. As well as painting prolifically he also frames all his own pictures and provides a picture framing service for customers. Intriguingly he will make a frame first and then paint a picture to fill it. His weapon of choice for the painting part is a pallet knife rather than a brush and he demonstrates what can be an endless process of scraping and refashioning a picture as his restless imagination goes to work.
Mentor and protégé seem to connect on numerous levels. There is their art: Chris paints the sea and her famously sensual and turbulent sea paintings are also an inspiration. They are both Suffolk artists and they both have a raw but sensitive quality that shines through in their work. Maggi Hambling the mentor can kick the establishment quite as hard as her protégé.