The Hidden Perversions of the British Painter Paul Roberts

The Superhumanist art movement, launched by the well-known English gallerist Nicholas Treadwell in the late 1970s, gave a reflection of the the contemporary feelings of the Western experience. It was engrossed by daily life, with street characters, or characters of an imperceptive nature, and with pictures displaying the emotions, pressures or hidden perversions lying within each of us, without including any aesthetic gesture to distract from the vivid nature of the image.

Heightened Realities

One of the noticeable representatives of the movement is the musician, songwriter, and figurative painter Paul Roberts. His paintings exist in the peripheral space between perceived glamour and kitsch, taking their cues from the archetypes of genre fiction and the heightened realities of cinema and photography. The distinctive use of color and the exaggerated “realism” serve to emphasize the artificiality of his images, which also have been described as "dreams made uncomfortably a little real". At the heart of his work is always the desire to create energy on the canvas – to draw the viewer into a fragmentary still of a world that is between realities.

Below some examples of his most sensual work...


Fig.1. 'Bodyguard 3 '  (1979)


Fig.2. 'Home Again ' (1977)


Fig.4. 'Night Starvation' (1983)


Fig.5. 'The Operator' (1977)


Fig.6. 'Mirror Mirror ' (1977) 


Fig.7. 'The Bodyguard ' (1977)


Fig.8. 'Fickle Heart '(1977) This picture was also used for the album cover of Sniff N'Tears "Driver's Seat" (1978)

In Premium you can find much more of Paul Roberts' sensual pieces and more background on the artist.

Click HERE for the adult fantasies of the British illustrator Les Edwards