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Martyn Dukes

Martyn Dukes was born in 1958 and grew up in Nottingham, England. After attending art schools in Canterbury, Loughborough and London, Martyn Dukes taught in Kent before moving to France in 1999 to teach art. In 2006 Martyn Dukes took French citizenship and is currently Head of Fine Art at the American School in Switzerland (TASIS). Despite the constant challenges of practising his art and the demands of being an art teacher, he manages to combine both activities in a synergistic way.

His great-grandfather was a member of the Royal College of Art in London at the beginning of the 20th century, and Martyn Dukes can still remember feeling awe when he saw his work. As time went on, Martyn Dukes realised that these works had a great influence on his development as an aspiring young artist. Over the years, Martyn Dukes has explored a variety of themes through art. Central to this has always been a deep fascination with colour, an intellectual curiosity for composition and a childlike delight in the properties of pigments and paint.

The paintings in this exhibition are part of a long-running series based on a fascination with a dwindling industrial landscape, where buildings and spaces once alive with people and machines are now abandoned, exposed to the elements, padlocked, and left to decay and rust. As a result of economic and social change, each of these places has its own history of closure, loss, stagnation, and decline. Despite all this, these poignant memories also have a certain beauty and elegance.
Martyn Dukes has exhibited in numerous galleries and exhibitions across Europe since the 1990s, including in London and Toulouse, and his work is in several private collections.

Martyn Dukes

Martyn Dukes: Officine Cameroni SA / Diptych, acrylic on canvas / 2 panels each 100 x 100 cm, total 100 x 200 cm

Martyn Dukes

Martyn Dukes: A Homage to Walter Sickert - Green Workshop Door / Acrylics on canvas, 120 x 80 cm