Christopher Rainham’s paintings draw from an enduring engagement with the natural world, and more specifically our lived experience within it. Birds, animals and flora move through his compositions not simply as subjects, but as symbols and carriers of meaning. They are characters from myth and folklore, metaphors embedded in language, and fragments of belief systems that shape how we understand the world.

Living and working in the Calder Valley, Rainham responds to the quiet encounters that occur in daily life: a movement in the trees, a bird crossing the sky, the subtle archaeology of landscape and memory. These interactions become starting points for paintings that sit somewhere between observation and imagination. His works may emerge from a line of text, a half remembered story, or the emotional space between narratives, drawing together personal knowledge, history and symbolism into a singular image.

Rainham’s practice is rooted in drawing. He works directly onto primed canvas or board, sometimes creating stencils for repeated forms or using projection to explore scale and composition. Surfaces are layered with earth tones such as ochre, brown, blue and grey before images are built, disrupted and rebuilt. Washes are often applied to soften, obscure and rework earlier stages, allowing depth, atmosphere and flexibility to develop across the picture plane.