Dairy Lea − 2018

Coming out of his interest in the still life genre, Furr’s first cheese painting ‘Finn’ was painted in 2009. It is a painting of an artisan cheese. The first painting of a mass produced cheese occurring in 2011 with ‘Dairy Lea 2011’ which was on a brown backgorund followed by ‘Baby Bel’ in 2014. This Dairy Lea was painted in 2016 when his cheeses started to appear on coloured or dark slate grey backgrounds.

Furr would hand paint backgrounds for the still life corner he had set up in his studio in Ham and choose the colours according to the cheese that were placed on them. Every cheese is painted from life in a few hours.

As one critic mentioned there is often a dichotomy between the subject featured and it’s background.
“(The cheese paintings) place hyper-realistic cheeses on an abstract background that look more like paint than a table, providing a subtly satisfying combination of registers” – Paul Carey Kent reviewing Bartha Contemporary Fish and Cheese show in 2024

When asked about the inspiration for the works at his first showing of them in 2013 Furr said

“Initially I had the idea of painting the series of cheeses because there’s so many different cheeses and I thought I’d start with the Great British cheeses and then there was a few French ones too. They’ve got their own characters I think and their own textures and people really seem to like them. I think a lot of people get hungry looking at them actually. I’m hungry now. I think my favourite one is the ‘Petit Langres’ which is a French cheese which is very tasty. What made me do it in the first place? Well I just thought it would be a fun thing to do, it’s a fun series and I like to give myself challenges. I really like the old Spanish still life painters so I thought – take on that tradition and you know do it with cheeses. The first ones were traditional cheeses but I did do a Dairy Lea – I threw that in as a red herring originally, that was my nod to modernity.”

The first cheese painting exhibition occured at ‘Outside the Square’ gallery in Margate, UK on 23rd November 2013. It was a sell out show, the works bought by mainly one collector.

Furr’s next exhibition was ‘The Humble Cheese’ in 2016 at the Knight Webb gallery in Brixton. The cheeses backgounds started to appear in different colours and the mass produced cheeses were given equal importance with the artisan.

When asked about his motivation Furr stated: “I suppose It started with milk. ‘Cheese – milk’s leap toward immortality’ – Clifton Fadiman A forgotten milk bottle to be exact 25 years ago. In my studio in 41 New Road, Whitechapel in 1993 a half full bottle of milk had gone off and I painted it. My friend Steve Cope bought it off me and suggested a few years later that I might paint cheese so I guess the idea must have been curdling in his head . Either way, I thought it was good one. The mass produced cheeses also have an appeal for a different reason. They are more pop art. I went to the supermarket for them like Andy Warhol."

'Cheese as an object of beauty in itself has recently been rediscovered by Christian Furr. They have this humour about them that I really like'– BBC Culture , ‘The Cheese that inspired Dali’, Cath Pound. 5th May 2017

‘London based Christian Furr has painted the humble cheese for over a decade. The cheese has become his metaphor for simplicity, tradition and artisan dedication; all of which are attributes many critics have associated with the artist’s own oil painting practice.’ – Artlyst