Jon Ratigan was born in Tredegar, Gwent in 1969. A first-class art graduate from UWIC, he is both a painter and filmmaker who has now lived and worked in Cardiff for the past fourteen years. He has been involved in both community art and has taught art in schools in the area.
Both his paintings and films share a unique surreal style and are preoccupied with similar ideas, anxieties and motifs. Jon Ratigan has exhibited in a number of group and open exhibitions around the UK.

Artists Statement:

"At the root of my work is a fundamental fascination with the representation of the human figure. Often my compositions are very simple - a man with an object or two sat at a table. But, as in much Surrealist work, the objects present often betray the latent anxieties of the human figures involved. In Freudian terms, the men in these pictures are hopelessly embroiled in a perpetual play bewteen the suppression of their masculinity by contemporary society on the one hand and the attempted assertion of their own masculinity through suitable objects on the other.
These pictures are monuments to masculinity in the 21st century Britain; they are also, I hope, fun to look at."

Close Up

Surrealism - (adjective) Surrealism began in the 1920's. It involves the putting together of strange images and things that are not normally seen together.
(Collins Dictionary)
It also extends to the production of images, or objects, that are 'beyond realism.'

Some of the the best known practioners of Surrealism:
Giorgio de Chirico
George Grosz
Rudolf Schlichter
Otto Dix
Pablo Picasso
Fernand Léger
and of course -
Salvador Dali

Contact Jon at:
info@welshartsarchive.org.uk