Christopher Wood (b. 1962 in Edinburgh) is a contemporary Scottish abstract landscape painter. Educated at George Watson's College and James Gillespie's High School, he received a Bachelor of Arts at Edinburgh College of Art, specialising in drawing and painting.
He now lives and works in the coastal town of Dunbar, East Lothian.
He is an active proponent of the FareShare program for donations to the homeless. Preferring to paint with oil and enamel, he is often compared to Nicolas de Staël, Joan Eardley, and William Gillies.
Generally showing elements of representation and abstraction in his works, Wood's paintings, allegedly inspired by the landscapes around his home in Dunbar, are likely inspired by color fields. Recently, he has begun experimenting with mixed media, implementing the imperfections within his choice of canvas, in combination with the heavy application of paint, to produce the desired effect. Also, since the beginning of his career, he has slowly begun producing more abstract works, usually preferring to use impasto to shape his forms.
Although his works are more abstract now, Wood insists that his designs ultimately come from nature: "While my paintings are no longer topographical, for me they are still solidly grounded in Nature. They have to be. The meaning of a painting is now more about emotional responses,...but their inspiration and visual vocabulary still come from the land.." [1]
Often he implements impasto in uncommon ways; often, he scrapes away nearly the entirety of a layer of paint, apparently to reveal the texture of the paint itself. He also commonly creates paintings by overpainting his previous compositions.
Since 1987, his work has been exhibited around the United Kingdom, in Corpus Christi College, at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, and the Paisley Art Institute, as well as the Manor House Gallery, Macaulay Gallery, and many other galleries in Edinburgh, Oxfordshire, London, Glasgow, East Lothian, Newcastle, Aldeburgh, Aberfoyle, Manchester, Leicester, and Glyndebourne.