Much More Then Meets The Eye at Bradford Industrial Museum

Much More Then Meets the Eye is an exhibition of collage works by young artist James Owen Thomas.

James uses discarded scratch cards to create wonderfully intricate images of landscape scenes and animals found across Yorkshire and the UK.

Artists who influence James include L.S. Lowry and his paintings of the industrial landscapes of North-West England. Vincent van Gogh is his favourite artist but as some of the earlier work was sketched, James decided to bring colour to van Gogh’s Men and Women Miners Going to Work, 1880. James adapted it and made a collage, now called Going to Work (after Vincent van Gogh’s sketch 1880).

When making his collages from used scratch cards, no paint is required as their bright colours are ideal for this form of upcycling artwork. “The colours I choose”, James goes on to explain, “depend on the range of scratch cards I have available at the time. Without the right shade of blue for example, I decided the sky for the van Gogh picture had to turn a shade of orange.”

The result is a vividly coloured collage which you can see at the exhibition, together with a selection of James’ other collage artwork.

Please come along and visit the exhibition: Much More Than Meets The Eye, which runs from Wednesday 9th May to Sunday 1st July 2018 at the Bradford Industrial Museum.