Art review: Tony Bevan: Trees and Archives at Ben Brown Fine Arts

Yorkshire-born painter Tony Bevan, 63, is renowned for bloodshot portraits mapped with veins that contort, twist and strain toward the subconscious. His latest exhibition (a show of 15 new paintings of trees and archive grids) is a departure in terms of subject matter but not in terms of theme.

 

The trees have an organic starkness comparable to the self portraits. In rusty, bloody colours, they resemble neurones and capillaries, sending information, locking it in. The archive paintings are even more enigmatic. Large grids of indeterminate files stretch across the canvas, their quiet orderedness the perfect compliment to the gnarled chaos of the trees. Proof, as if it was necessary, that Bevan is one of the finest figurative painters working in Britain today.