Bruce Rimell is a visual artist and poet living in Shipley. Born and raised in Wiltshire, he has been living with his husband in Bradford for twenty years, and running his arts practice freelance since 2007.
Largely self-taught as an artist, his academic background was originally in astrophysics. This was followed by a period living in Japan, during which time he began to engage in self-directed studies, developing his own idiosyncratic medium of acrylics, inks and markers on canvas, sometimes overlaid with a UV lacquer.
Are We Orbiting (Panel 2)
My work as an artist principally explores visionary, ethnographic, archaeological and cognitive themes, with vibrant imagery springing from the confluence of personal visionary experiences since childhood, shimmering sensations of archaeological prehistories, the humanist interplay of the cognitive and ethnographic, and dynamics of the queer and the mythical.
I strive to create a unique visual aesthetic, sitting between painting, drawing and illustration: my holistic imagery is constructed simultaneously from smooth flowing lines and fragmented anatomies, fusing the eye-popping imagery of Keith Haring, archaic structures of Aztec/Maya codices, and the animistic vitality of Minoan art from the Bronze Age Mediterranean. All of this acts as a vehicle towards a single aim: what I call ‘Beyond-The-Self Exploration’.
Are We Orbiting (Panel 3)
Of the fundamental drives of his work as an artist, he says:
“There is something childlike about being an artist, for me. My work might seem spiritual, but it is also deeply humanist and open-ended, with no final answers: I am human, and I am an artist. This is the most astounding thing, an experienced question which I will spend my whole life discovering. Every single day of my life, it is a mind-blowing joy.”
His work has been exhibited widely across the UK, including London, Brighton and Leeds, as well as Cartwright Hall in Bradford, and his work is regularly represented at Cupola Gallery in Sheffield.
Internationally, his art has been featured in a range of travelling exhibitions across Europe (France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Ireland), the USA (New York, San Francisco, Chicago), Latin America (Mexico and Colombia), and East Asia (Singapore, the Philippines).
Beacon (Detail)
The ‘PaintUp With Kamamma’ project: an initiative to paint murals on houses in South African townships as part of community development, is also an ongoing labour of love for him. Current directions in his arts practice involve the creation of intense, large-scale, multi-panel friezes towards a hyperactive visual engagement.
My emerging practice as a poet is no less idiosyncratic – having its beginnings in accompanying texts for my artworks, but which has, since the pandemic, taken on life and new directions of its own. Explorations of lost human voices in ancient landscapes, Gay/Queer sexual dynamics – told in graphic, no-filter narratives, and the challenges of living with ADHD in a neuro-normative world – are all key themes, among several others.
Hey Lost Avatar
His poetry sits, as he says, ‘a long way from any literary zeitgeist’, and he tends to self-publish in volumes adorned with his own striking artworks. His back catalogue includes: ‘Nine Nights Awake’ (2023): ‘a monumental but fractured and experimental autobiography-cum-epic-satire’ ; ‘Elegies And Dirty Truths’ (2024): a ‘testament to gay/ADHD suffering written with a wired, savage voice’; and ‘Bloodhoney Songs’ (2024): a ‘poetic travelogue from a journey to Iceland, which contains a dense, alliterative dreaming fall into the dark arms of the Norse god Loki!’
Bruce has also co-authored a collaborative international art publication: ‘The Encyclopaedia of Fernal Affairs’ (2015), as well as several independent research publications on visionary/psychedelic and archaeological themes. These include ‘They Shimmer Within’ (2018) and ‘The Minoan Epiphany: A Bronze Age Visionary Culture’ (2020).
Human Visions
Website: www.biroz.net
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BruceRimellArts
Instagram: @brucerimell