Rawlinson is an abstract painter primarily working in oils. His work explores the natural world, with a particular focus on lichen – a symbiotic natural organism. He takes interest in their ‘often-unnoticed and underappreciated significance within our ecology, highlighting the extent of our vital relationship with everything that makes up life on earth’.
Using abstraction, gestural mark-making and a range of painterly techniques to ‘give life to’ his paintings, he builds up rich and textural images on large scale canvases. The works seek to manipulate the act and experience of looking; and provide spaces of contemplation and reflection. They form a basis for wider philosophical enquiries, drawing on existentialism and phenomenology, around ‘what it means to be alive’, and what our individual and collective place in the world might be.
Rawlinson has exhibited across the UK, including Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, Brick Lane Gallery, London and The Alchemy Experiment Glasgow. Recently he was awarded a travel scholarship by The Aidan Threlfall Trust to the Scottish Highlands.
