Juan Ford’s practice has consistently been engaged with opening new possibilities for realism in painting. He has employed many strategies that argue around the theoretical ‘problems’ of realism in painting. Ford enjoys exploiting the limited shortcomings of the dull, officially sanctioned dialogue between painting and its would-be executioner, photography, in order to develop new potential for realism. While his work evolves and varies across time, it characteristically involves an examination of the human figure and its fraught relationship to the natural environment.