Artist Chris Coombes recreates museum postcards as handmade paintings

Artist Chris Coombes creates a series of handmade gouache paintings based on mass-produced museum postcards in London.

He selects famous artworks from various galleries and reproduces them on A6 sized watercolor paper. The project explores how original art transforms into printed souvenirs and then back into unique physical pieces. Coombes began the project after working at the Tate, a major art gallery in London. He draws inspiration from the way museums curate and sell postcards to the public.

He uses a camera lucida app on his phone to transfer the images from the postcards onto paper. He then applies varnish to the finished gouache paintings to protect the surface before scanning them for his website. The artist chooses works by famous figures like Richter, Duchamp, and Warhol. While he originally focused on pieces from the Tate, he now includes works from the Whitechapel Gallery and the National Gallery.

He notes that reproducing mechanically made art, such as the dots in Bridget Riley's Hesitate, presents a specific technical challenge in his painting process.