PowerBallads
Power Ballads is a series of new paintings that summons masterpieces of the French Rococo, Italian Baroque, American and Norwegian Romanticism as well as images featured in commonplace, stock-photo archives. These variously esteemed pictures are digitally conflated by Newey; collaged together to form new painterly references. Value, historical significance and taste are confused in the online environment, and so too in this body of work.
The indifference of the Internet is countered in this series, to celebrate hyper-romance and melodrama. As paintings, which homage the Romantic era (1798-1837), the works also nod to the musical Power Ballad genre, seeking a state of the ‘sublime’, of heightened emotion and awe. Laser beams interrupt otherwise classical landscape conventions - fluorescent and pearlescent shimmers elevate the palettes of traditional pastoral schemas. The viewer is invited to step inside the painted vista and imagine a guitar solo or vocal crescendo; to be swooned.
Harvested from search engines, manipulated by software and collaged with imposters; the resulting paintings are ‘power ballads’; dedicated to our lost connection with the original.
- Saffron Newey
August 2025
WadeintheShineoftheEver(afterBierstadt) 2025
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
64 x 155 cm
$7,800
$2,800
SparkleintheRain
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Marouflage mount, Framed in Victorian Ash
27 x 42.5 cm
IntotheLight,andtotheDay(after Church)
2025 Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
64.5 x 110 cm
$6,600
AndtotheDay 2025
Oil and Pearlescent
Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
38 x 38 cm
$2,800
AndtotheDay02 2025
Oil and Pearlescent
Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
25 x 25 cm
$1,900
SlippingbackongoldenTimes (afterBierstadt)
64 x 155 cm
$7,800
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
StrungoutonHeaven’sHigh(afterChurch), 2025, Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash, 44 x 85cm, $4,800
Oil on Canvas, Framed in Victorian Ash, 43.5x 64cm, $3,500
There has to be an invisible Sun(afterGude) 2025 Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
64 x 155 cm
$7,800
AMillionYearsfromToday(after Aivazovsky)
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian
Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
44 x 85 cm
$4,800
WhitehotDay,satellite01
2025
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Marouflage mount, Framed in Victorian Ash
28 x 45 cm
$2,800
QuietNightofawhitehotday(afterBierstadt)
2025
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton
Framed in Victorian Ash
64 x 107.5 cm
$6,600
WhitehotDay,satellite02
2025
Oil and Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Marouflage mount, Framed in Victorian Ash
25 x 43 cm
$2,800
Front Cover: SlippingbackongoldenTimes(afterBierstadt)
Pearlescent Pigment on Belgian Cotton Framed in Victorian Ash
Gallery Director
Manton
Gallery Manager
Isabella Wright Gallery Assistant Safron Holford