Viewing Tall tales and romanticised yarns in the mythic paintings of British artist Ryan Mosley 

Ryan Mosley is Sheffield-based painter known for narrative, theatrical works that comment on art history, pictorialism and class. The artist’s distinctive works portray colourful characters from the bourgeois to the blue-collared to the Bohemian, belonging to an intricate world of Mosley’s making.

Mosley’s latest exhibition is Heavy is the Mountain, opening this week at Josh Lilley gallery. With his wry wit and expansive imagination the 45 year old artist has created a cast of new figures. Mosley took inspiration from his working class background in northern England, his own family history, as well as local legends, historical and mythological figures. “They appear on the canvas,” Mosley has said of his characters.

Art history fans will also find Mosley’s work rich in references, from Hogarth, Manet and Picabia to Peter Doig, as well as nods to surrealism, social and magical realism. Yet what Mosley creates is always something entirely of his own, complex and carnivalesque compositions that seems to jump off the canvas and follow you out of the gallery.