Artist’s statement

Lindsay Servian’s artworks are focused on an holistic consideration of sustainable development. Reflecting a view that this requires changes in individual and collective behaviour, his context and materially sensitive works focus on socially engaged and participatory artworks that build collaboratively on heritage and includes consideration of livelihoods and community as well as the environment.

Sustainability (2024-25)

Cynon Valley Museum Exhibition
Mar 2025

Heritage

Heritage is intended as an anthropological work inviting the viewer (through use of a flashlight) to participate (like an archaeologist) in discovering the history of those who walked before in a former industrial environment.
910 mm x 610 mm (c. 36” x 24”)
Reflective (microscopic glass bead based) medium on rusted steel

Gap

Gap is a reflection on what felt like a gap (in livelihoods and changes to the community) with a blank canvas underneath that was being portrayed in discussions with former colliers and families in former mining communities, and socially engaging on discussions about thoughts for the future.
1400 mm x 1000 mm (c. 55” x 39”)
Oil painting (including hand-made coal based paint) on a collage of newspaper on canvas

Community

Community is an image of a row of landscaped, seemingly quiet, housing that was used in stimulating an oral history of communities in the past and socially engaging about the importance of various aspects of those communities for the future.
790 mm x 550 mm (c. 31” x 22”)
Image 1: Photograph projected onto manipulated rust on steel.
Image 2: Manipulated rust on steel

Environment

Rust pervades the Environment in many fomer heavy industrial areas (including river seepage) but with exciting work on cleansing.
910 mm x 610 mm (c. 36” x 24”)
Manipulated rust on steel

Beams

Beams is a work (in Vorticist tradition) looking upwards from underneath a coal mine’s lift shaft elevator. Like Gap, the work reflects thoughts about the future.
320 mm x 240 mm (c. 12” x 9.5”)
Pitt and Red Charcoal on Paper

Works on Paper (2023)

Mental health

The painting leads your eye over the Mental Health of folks that need considered and support.
Painting (on left): 520 mm x 320 mm (c. 20.5” x 12.5”)
Acrylic on paper
Included in the OCA/OU Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Calendar for Oct 2024: https://www.ocasa.org.uk/post/ed-i-calendar-2024

Breath

Breath is an abstract industrial landscape inspired by machinery extracting foul air, and bringing clean air, into enclosed spaces.
One of a series of study works being progressed as a large-scale work. Acrylic on paper. (Rust colours may be added).

Pre-dawn

Pre-dawn. A time to yourself, to your thoughts, to “just being”. A place known but unknown.
560 mm x 360 mm (c. 22” x 14”)
Acrylic on Paper

Movement

Movement and relationships
One of a series of study works being progresed in miniature and large scale. Acrylics and gouache on paper.

Study in B&W

Study in B&W
One of a series of study works being progresed in very large scale. Acrylics on paper.

Arteries

Overuse of complex irrigation and climate change was arguably a major cause for the fall of Angkor, whilst drying reservoirs also brought disease - environmental challenges that resonate today. Arteries is a cross-section image of a human skull with ink paths that intend to mirror an angiogram. The visualisation and materials nod to Angkor stone head sculptures, disrupted lives, Memento Mori, malaria and cicadas (sound and in culture).
300 mm x 250 mm (c. 12” x 10”)
Chinese and Indian ink on Cicada Skin Xuan (paper)
Image in “wet-form” but drying. Techniques allow (temporary) “irrigation” through foam block

Angkor

Reflections on a visit to the Angor Wat complex (Ta Prohm) resulted in an interest area in entropy and how the environment and other external factors have historically, with lessons to learn, impacted civilisations and industry.
280 mm x 200 mm (c. 11” x 8”)
Gouache and watercolour on paper

Wells

Interplay of light in Wells Cathedral’s Chapter House steps
400 mm x 280 mm (c. 16” x 11”)
Watercolour on paper

Chinese works (- 2023)

Chinese calligraphy

The Chinese Calligraphy (centre) is in Bronze Script and is on display (top right) in the Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen. The Library was officially opened on the 24th September 2012 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh. The calligraphy (lower right) was a gift by the artist from Au Yee-Lin (the artist’s teacher).
900 mm x 600 mm (c. 35” x 24”)
Chinese ink on paper. Original text inscibed in the Xing Hou Gui in the British Museum.
University of Aberdeen Art Collection - ABDUA 38851

Sutras

Two (of 134) pages of the Diamond Sutra after Chang Chi-Chih (1186-1266)
9140 mm x 305 mm (c. 360” x 12”)
Chinese ink on paper bound into a book

Painting

A painting of rocks and bamboo after Chinese Masters
280 mm x 140 mm (c. 11” x 5.5”)
Chinese ink on paper - a page bound into a calligraphy book (Heart Sutra) by the artist