Gareth Austin

Born in London in 1958, Gareth Austin grew up in South Africa till his early teens. He comes from an art and design background on both sides of his family so naturally followed a career in graphic design from his late 20’s.
Returning to fine art in the last 7 years, Gareth has fallen in love with oil for the vibrant colour and blending it affords. Generally his work is an attempt to draw attention to natural abundance, sunlight, shadows brilliant colour and texture through striking design. Realism is a way of freezing time, an invitation to appreciate the dazzling beauty of simple things. It’s his invitation to look at what we have already, right in front of us, not focus on what we don’t have. “There is joy and beauty in humble food ingredients. A lemon doesn’t envy an oranges ‘orange-ness’ it just tries to be the best version of a lemon it can be in the time it has. We could learn a lot from this.”
Gareth is an associate member of the RBSA and has exhibited locally and has sold work to private collections in Birmingham, UK & Boston Mass & Columbus Ohio USA. Most notable recent work is a graphic mural titled ‘My Brum’ commissioned for the Commonwealth Games 2022 depicting a crowd of diverse people in our city centre. See it in Union Street on a retail window just down from Poundland.
Gareth currently lives & works in South Birmingham as a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and fine artist.
