Artists' Quarter

I am an oil-painter with a particular interest in figure and 'en plein-air' painting. Whenever possible I like to paint in the open air, directly in front of the subject. This, I think, gives my work a vibrancy and vitality sadly lacking in much of studio painting. 

In fact, I disapprove of studios. Someone once said that a brush stroke in the field is worth twenty in the studio, and my own experience makes me heartily agree with this.

When I started painting I think the thing that first attracted me was Ruskin's exhortation that all men, as part of their morning salutations, should go out and paint a picture of the sky. This sounded like a very nice thing to do, so I decided to give it a go, and I've not really stopped painting since.

Malcolm at work in the great outdoors.

My subject matter is the ordinary, the domestic and the common place. I do not seek out the spectacular, the shocking or the disturbing. I'm drawn to the beautiful but do not seek it out. If my paintings have any purpose, apart from my own pleasure in painting them, it is to show the extraordinary in the ordinary. 

I do not consider myself part of the artistic establishment, which I find backward looking and conservative, but prefer to go my own way and ignore present fads and fashions.

My paintings are popular and can be found in galleries throughout the UK and the USA. They seem particularly popular in the USA for some reason.

When I'm not painting, I'm a professor of mathematics. I have an international reputation for my work in relativity, black holes, and cosmology. I'm also the author of quite a well known book on general relativity.

Malcolm Ludvigsen