In this episode of Home Fires, Dale Lewis discusses his painting Basket Case (2020), which portrays his local Wetherspoon's pub, just after Christmas 2019. In his renderings of London life, Lewis taps into a familiar, quintessentially British artistic tradition of addressing the tough realities of contemporary society and its fringes through a prism of dark humour and allegory.
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Lewis is currently working on his largest project to date - a 36 metre long painting entitled The Great Day. The panoramic work depicts a continuous linear narrative tracing the artist’s walk to and from his studio in east London on any given day, with events unfolding cinematically. In preparation, Lewis has created several "storyboard" paintings, isolating individual scenes that may feature, albeit in an adapted form, in the final monumental painting.
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Basket Case is my local Wetherspoons at breakfast time. The nauseating patterns in the pub, the wallpaper, pots of hanging baskets, patterned plates and heavy grained wood tables add to the nausea of being there. Greasy, tepid breakfasts washed down with pints of beer and excruciatingly dull conversations.
-Dale Lewis
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In the studio
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Dale Lewis completed a BA in Fine Art at London Guildhall in 2002, an MFA at Brighton in 2006 and graduated the Turps Studio Programme in 2015. He was the recipient of the 2016 Jerwood Painting Fellowship, and completed the Zabludowicz Residency in New York City in 2017. In spring 2018 he participated at a residency at the Arsenal in Montreal. Lewis’ work features in international collections including the Saatchi Collection, David Roberts Art Foundation and the Zabludowicz Collection. Lewis lives and works in London.
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"I identify with everyone I put into the painting, whether it's someone I know personally very well - like a family member, or a lover or a friend - or whether it's a complete stranger. I try and treat them all with the same kind of approach, or trepidation or tenderness."
-Dale Lewis
