ROY OXLADE: BRITAIN’S BRILLIANT TEARAWAY
Miranda Richmond, Morning Star
May 2026
Initially, to the casual visitor, Roy Oxlade’s paintings may appear messy, formless and indecipherable. They might be excused for thinking he had no training at all in the art of painting. The shapes appear random, the brushwork artless and the colour schemes unappealing.
But given some time with the paintings, spacial relationships begin to reveal themselves, and a scale, which is suggestive of interior spaces.
Without knowing the work at all, and without reading the title, one is confronted, for example, by a rectangular canvas displaying a large rust-coloured oblong in the centre with a banjo-like linear form, a cream area to the left with a black lopsided triangle towards the corner, some blackish forms bottom right. Graphic shapes in crude paint lines — an ochre oval, a green circle and a black square banjo-like linear form dance in an arc cross the canvas, like the objects tossed from the hand of a juggler. All this, with a pale blue tile-like area top right create a cluttered space which could represent perhaps, a kitchen with objects such as a stove, pans, a colander. […]