Allan Renshaw spent his childhood and adolescence living in Manchester & Salford spending his early years in Moss side, Cholton-on-Medlock & Hulme. He then moved to Old Trafford and then to higher Kersal, Salford. Allan identifies two teachers who were highly influential during his adolescence. The first was Bob Carrol, a PE teacher who introduced him to rock climbing, pot-holing, mountain walking & the wilderness of the Peak District, North Wales and Scotland. This nurtured his long-lasting appreciation and relationship with nature. The second was Tom Hastings, an art teacher who introduced him to painting & architecture and encouraged him to explore art mediums. Tom also gave Allan a perspective on the historical context of art, particularly through architecture and had a large painting of Allan’s hung in the school foyer and had his etchings published in the school magazine. Allan went on to a Foundation Course in Fine Art. This gave him an introduction to Modern Art and an opportunity to lay the foundations for his relationship with painting and his role as an artist.

At the age of 22 Allan set off to travel independently and extensively outside the UK. These early travels took him through Europe and onto Iran, Baluchistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Malaya. After a period working in Australia he travelled on to Peru, Bolivia via Fiji and Tahiti and then on to Quebec in Canada. Allan says this world trip was the powerful developmental experience he had been looking for, challenging and developing his resilience and sense of self and helping him form his own world view whilst also challenging his cultural assumptions. He describes this journey as ‘a rite of passage’.

During this period Allan developed his thinking through reading as well as through the impact of other cultures and religions. He cites the Russian writer, Dostoevsky and his book ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ as an early formative influence and a powerful stimulus for changes in his psychological thinking and development. This eventually facilitated a deeper understanding of the importance of political, psychological and environmental impacts on human development. But also a view that there is a confluence of ideas, themes and quests for meaning that evidences a fundamental psychic unity in the needs of human beings– albeit often in the context of terrible conflict, destruction and suffering.

Allan has lived in Western Australia, Peru, Quebec, Southern Ireland & France. From 2003 he spent two years in Roussillon in the South of France where he converted a Grange that provided him with an entire floor space as a studio with views of the dramatic Pyrenean Mountain ‘Canigou’. This period allowed him to experiment and lay down the foundations for the current development of his painting. He now lives on the Conwy Estuary in North Wales.

His professional life includes the roles of Psychotherapist and Social Worker as well as Painter.

Allan describes the early work he did with children affected by severe mental & physical disabilities and by mental health & family difficulties as capturing his imagination and giving him a context for the development of his social and psychological thinking and ideas. This eventually led to his interest in psychotherapy and his choice to set his therapeutic practice within Social Work. His therapeutic practice has been influenced by his training in Psychoanalytic Studies of Children, Client Centred Psychotherapy and Play & Art Therapy but also by Jungian Sandplay Therapy and Systemic Family work. Apart from his clinical therapeutic work and the development of Family Intervention Services Allan has worked with Community Drama, Creative Arts Projects and has facilitated Community Murals. His current interest is Developmental Psychotherapy with a focus on the maturational development of Children and Parents set against backgrounds of trauma, neglect and abuse. Allan is a highly regarded practitioner and Project Leader specialising in developing innovative mental health projects.

Allan says his painting is part of the same constellation as his therapeutic work; his defined and undefined social roles and comes from the same psychic root- the fundamental quest for understanding, meaning and balance in this life. He describes his painting as providing him with a balance that allows him the freedom to focus on psychic and spiritual phenomena without an immediate practical application. However he does see painting as potentially opening the unconscious of the viewer and stimulating insight, what he calls ‘mythic vision’ an opening of the mind to a bigger picture. Allan has produced significant artworks and his recent work which explores parallel forms and simple geometric structures has resulted in some very impressive and intriguing series. His painting is an attempt to apprehend unconscious psychic elements and work them into the texture of conscious experience. His painting mainifests elements of organic life – Land, Sea and Sky Scapes as well as objects and forms. He says these elements are usually perceived by the viewer through free association. However Allan does not always set out to portray these elements in his paintings in a figurative sense but may otherwise allude to them. It is more accurate to say that he is particularly attuned to the unconscious aspects of the environment around him both natural and human. These environmental influences readily imprint themselves and are thence manifest in his creative works. His work presents elemental psychic images and forces. These occur as in the ‘Matrix Mandalas’ for example, as overlaid structures as if representing an imprinted view-finder or lens used to look through or beyond. Some of his paintings can appear to have the quality of a meditative or contemplative process but can also challenge or give cause for reflection.

He says he is not an abstract painter in the formal sense although he accepts the images he paints can be viewed as abstractions. His interest in fragmentation and remnants reflects his interest in what cannot be clearly seen or understood and what is left behind. There are reflections in paintings such as those from the ‘Parallels’ series of the shifting seascape of the estuary where he lives, the transformation, what remains and what is removed as the tide ebbs and flows. They can also be seen as his own psychic print-outs. His work is at once modern and ancient; this can be seen most clearly in mythic paintings such as ‘The Celestial Swimmers’. Allan says his painting has a ‘pagan presence’ in the sense that it is associated with place and evolves out of a particular place but also in the sense of belonging to the collective unconscious and because of their symbolic nature. He therefore recognises that his art possesses the quality of a psychic language because of the elemental nature of the images he produces. He says that this is linked to his appreciation of what he sees as the mythic quality of nature and the human mind and his openness to allowing the expression of unconscious experience through its layers in his work.

Allan shows considerable development as an innovative practitioner. This is underpinned by a significant range of experiences that has allowed his natural ability as innovator to flourish. When this background is coupled with his discipline, commitment and creative nature we can then continue to expect some very special and intriguing artwork.

© Allan Renshaw. All rights reserved.