Alan Rankle

Alan Rankle
Born	Alan Rankle 1952 Oldham, United Kingdom
Education	Rochdale School of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London
Known for	Painting

Alan Rankle (born 1952 in Oldham, England) is a British artist and is part of the duo Rankle & Reynolds. During a thirty-year career he has worked primarily as a painter. He explores social and environmental issues of the day through Landscape Art.

Rankle was born in Oldham, Lancashire, England in 1952 and studied at Rochdale School of Art (1968–70) and Goldsmiths', University of London (1970–73).

From 1973 feeling that his work, while well informed by conceptual art practice, lacked a realistic visceral dimension, he immersed himself in a study of the techniques of 17th century Dutch masters, the Abstract Expressionists and significantly the Ch'an (Zen) painters and calligraphers of China. During 1973–76 he studied Taoist and Ch'an Buddhist Arts, including T'ai Chi Ch'uan, with Dr. Liu Hsiu Chi. Fellow students at the Liu Academy included the musician Francis Monkman and Fritjof Capra author of 'The Tao of Physics.' During this time Rankle's pursuit of his interests in Old Master painting led him to further studies and later employment in the field of art conservation.

His first exhibition, held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, was a multi-media performance/installation based on Chaucer's The Pardonner's Tale (1973).

Rankle takes as his main subject the development of landscape art as a concept related to changes in attitude to the environment. In some works he treats the entire history of landscape painting almost as a found object; manipulating and cross-referencing styles and techniques from diverse periods and cultures, within a post-modernist fusion of abstract, trompe l'oeil and figurative imagery. In "Landscapes for the North" Maidstone Museum 1996 he states: "Styles are emblems of the ways we can shift our attention".

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