Emerging artist Charlie Gosling is being compared to Frank Auerbach. Discover his haunting portraits in London

Since graduating from Camberwell College of Arts in 2023, Charlie Gosling has established a distinctive painterly style. His luscious mark-makings and evocative portraits, triggering comparisons to Auerbach and de Kooning, reference the historical art canon, but Gosling’s intimate and direct works are very much his own.

In his second exhibition at London’s Incubator gallery, Good Luck with Me Here, Gosling considers those closest to him. Like Lucien Freud, his cast of subjects are populated by friends and family. ‘I like painting people I know, it allows you both to see them differently. I often paint people I admire. That’s what I’m after – capturing that admiration,’ says Gosling.

His process digs into this intimacy. In contrast to his earlier works, which saw him layer paint with a tangible thickness, Gosling is here stripping it back, applying and scraping away layers of paint to create living works which are almost abstract in their swirls of colour and style. ‘I don’t see scraping as reduction but adding to the painting,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t affect how I see a sitter, but it does take more time as I often scrape and add the paint several times. It’s nothing more than a technique. Some paintings are more scraped than others for various reasons, and difficulty with the painting itself. It’s not based on the sitter.’

Gosling’s faces confront the viewer. Working from both photographs and life, Gosling is searching for the essence of the person, in a physical process which takes shape on the canvas. ‘I see paintings through paintings. Auerbach and Cezanne were both inspired by Rembrandt. De Kooning was inspired by Soutine. Soutine was inspired by Cezanne. I like what Auerbach said – when a painting leaves the studio it’s "a new species of living thing". I try not to get too influenced by other painters’ work.’

Charlie Gosling at Incubator until 24 May