Edinburgh gallery Hunted Projects is presenting an exhibition by London-based artist Paul Housley – The Mathematics of Solitude. Housley’s paintings have a unique sense of story-telling, memory, and reflection of the environs and the self, in an echo of the 19th-century romantic figure of the artist as Flaneur – the observing city life with both detachment and deep engagement.

This tension is characterised in many works by the depiction of a lone figure standing adrift in the scene, present but set apart, for instance still while around him is a swirl of movement – solitude amid the lively commotion. The paintings seek to evoke the weight, temperature, the atmosphere of moments in life, observed in stillness, such as the simple pleasures of reading, walking through a park, or losing oneself in thought become acts of quiet resistance – ways of engaging with the world while remaining apart from it.

After gaining an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London, Housley’s work has been widely exhibited internationally and in England, Housley’s work has been printed in numerous publications.