The in-and-out nature of lockdown has, in part, led me to explore a variety of different media. I spent many months conducting a rather maudlin exploration of watercolour and gauche. I then moved onto play with pastels. A few years ago, I was given a large 120-piece set of Sennelier soft pastels by some good friends of mine. I decided to use these and made a considered decision to make a more joyous and hopeful series. I called it the Road Up and posted it almost daily on my instagram feed. Pastels are joyously messy and very therapeutic to use. There were a number of themes in what I did. One, as can be seen above, is riffing on similar colour ranges, in this case red and yellow, encased in charcoal borders. The other theme, again featuring charcoal shapes, was the construction of florid designs that I would then infill either with solid colour (like the above right) or with a gradation of colours (like the above left). Often I would not consciously choose what I was going to do when I started, but would be either guided by instinct, the amount of time I had available or a strange desire not to leave out some of the pastels. Looking back on it now, I prefer the results of the above left but gained equal pleasure from producing both. The next theme was a design based on a field of colour. The field of colour would not be uniform but would again use blended colours from the same range, in this case brown (above left) and blue (above right). On top of these I formed sigils of various designs, the yellow gold pastel being a favourite. I particularly like the effect when you move the pastel in a wave or curve, with its longest edge pressed flat on the paper. You can see this in both of the above. Two of my favourite artists are Agnes Martin and Sonia Delaunay. They have been influences of mine for a while and both of them can be seen in this series. Never is this more obvious than in the above, where you have Martin's formal geometric shapes combined with Delaunay's bold, even brash colours. The red-themed squares (above left) are, I think, the more effective of the two and I did a number of these. The triangles are more of an experiment and were less successful. Again, they are very tactile and therapeutic to produce. Sometimes though, you just have to go a bit crazy and let out a burst of energy in high speed mark making on either a blank page (above left) or again on a field of colour. Some of my friends find these the best of these series, saying they have a tremendous sense of energy to them. I find them cathartic to do but to messy to contemplate afterwards. I prefer the above right, probably because it is calmer. Half the fun here though is applying the pastel in different ways and at different angles (and speeds). Of course, sometimes you have to draw a tiger/chinese dragon.
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I have completed some new Still Life Paintings. You can see them and others here.
The Henley Arts Trail usually runs during the bank holiday weekend in May and features some 30 plus artists. It runs every year, well nearly every year. This year it was of course Covidised and is taking place this weekend (and last weekend but I missed it) in a much-attenuated form. In fact I could only discover two manifestations of it. The first of these was a display of the wares of Margaret Wainwright (above). There are two parts to her practice, ceramics and wood. The ceramics are solid and earthy in blacks, browns and golds. Assembled in coils, they have a very tactile bulbous quality, and the rougher-hewn ones appealed to me particularly. They are all inspired by Charnwood Forest, from which the wood, carved into the various shapes you can see, is sourced. It can all be found on Gravel Hill in Henley outside number 36. It is open today and I recommend going along. I plan to come away with something. Down the hill and in the Old Fire Station Gallery, behind the Town Hall, are three artists. Again we have ceramics by Karen Marks (above left), well… porcelain to be exact. These silky wave forms have lovely crinkly edges and sinuous blue patterns across them. She has some lovely conical pots in the same style if your desire is for something more practical. Sharing the space are these animal-themed stained glass panels (above right) by Jaci Foster. I prefer my stained glass to be more abstract, but if you are attracted by animal themes (and many people are) these are of good quality. There is one featuring two bunnies (it is the small one in the centre) that I thought was particularly fine. The work of Jennie Jewitt-Harris features mottled multicoloured backgrounds on which sits a figure (usually a famous figure) converted into a fairy. The best of them, which is greatly enjoyed, is the one above of Mo Mowlem.
Hopefully next year the Henley Arts Trail will take place in full and I can explore it all. It has been a tumultuous year for many people, me included. My life has taken a strange and unexpected turn, which I may talk about in future posts. As such, this website and blog has been somewhat neglected.
Now however the time has come to work on it again, and I have started with a bit of an image makeover. The website has been simplified: the theme and colour scheme changed and the pointless home page gone. One thing that lockdown has done is made me very productive. I shall shortly start posting photos of the work I have done on the website. A couple of sneak previews below, or if you are too impatient you can see them on my instagram page. Being stranded out in the countryside and all the museums and galleries being shut, this blog will be in abeyance until such time as they reopen and I can go again. Strangely, I have felt no urge at all to engage with the various digital offerings the galleries are all putting out. For me, seeing the art in person is the thing and a reproduction rarely produces the same results.
I have also been without my usual art implements and so, with the weather being quite good and there literally being nothing else to do, I have had to improvise. So I hammered two pieces of balsa to a board, added in some nails, tied it to a stepladder with some wire and there you are… an easel. Fortunately, Cass Art was able to deliver some essential supplies and then it was up and running. The above was my first painting, a sort of test piece if you will. The main thing I blog about and the focus of my interests is visiting museum exhibitions and reviewing the same. This tedious virus-caused isolation means that is no longer possible. I find, along with many people, that this absence of stimulation causes me to be less productive and creative no more. Time weighs heavily on me and motivation is difficult to summon, especially as my usual studio space is currently miles away and forbidden to me. So instead, I have been experimenting with pen and watercolour. Making abstract shapes or geometric patterns, and experimenting with combinations of colours. My traditional stance is to use a variety of colours, often not having the same colour next to itself (such as in the above left). I soon tired of this though and branched out into using colours of the same base or of a similar hue: green in the above left and brown (strictly speaking madder) in the above right. I have been posting these up, every day, on my instagram page. I intend to continue doing so until the lockdown ends. I am not sure what will happen then. Maybe I will try exhibiting them (or the best of them). In the meantime I hope you enjoy them.
Gauguin's work was, until just 26 January 2020, on display at the National Gallery. Gauguin fits pleasingly into many of our clichés of an artist, particularly of the 19th Century. He was not appreciated in his time, selling very little work. He died in poverty (in his 50s) and was achingly misogynist, leaving his family to exploit young girls in Tahiti. He's paintings are pretty good though. I don't intend to talk about him so much but instead about the exhibition. Being impressionist it is of course super-colourful, as can be seen by the picture of Jesus in the Garden in Olives (above). In a breathtaking act of narcissism, Jesus bears more than a passing resemblance to the man himself. I really like the thin stripes of colour all pointing in the same direction. The show starts with self-portraits and then moves in chronological fashion through Gauguin's life, starting in Paris and then Brittany, Tahiti, back to Paris and finally Tahiti. The painting above is from the early Paris era. I don't intend to talk about the show in such a fashion. I have just picked out a few of my favourite pieces.
Let us return to the beginning, with this picture of two people meeting at a gate (above right). I believe the male figure is the artist himself. The skeletal trees and the white faces of the figures give a menacing feel to the painting, which sets off the purple-strewn ground around it. There are, in addition, a number of portraits. They range in subject but there are the usual obligatory portraits of middle-aged men in black, as in the above left. I do like his swirly moustache, which stands out nicely against that opalescent green background. In addition to Van Gogh, Gauguin was a friend of another artist called Merjer de Haan. There were a number of portraits and pictures of de Haan in one room, and I particularly liked one done quite simply in pencil. Gauguin also did a fine line in wood sculpture. An example is the sculpture of de Haan (above right). It is like some grumpy spirit or angry tree god. Guaguin then left to go to Tahiti, where he famously sleept with a number of disturbingly young people. He married one of them and painted her (above left). It is a striking picture. That glowing yellow contrasts superbly with the flowing purple backdrop. The way he captures her pose, with a sense of movement. It is the kind of painting you can gaze at for hours. He produced a number of paintings in this period, playing with marrying Tahitian tradition and Western art. Of course he produced some classical works such as this self-portrait (above right). This gallery included more wooden sculptures, figures flowing out of the wood. Plenty more yellow.
I have shown two of them. They were amongst my favourite in the show and I spent most of my time looking at them. The one above was probably my favourite piece on display. The flowers are beautifully rendered and the colour scheme is excellent.
So despite his obnoxious personality his stuff is worth seeing, so go and see it. Dora Maar, a name I only heard last year, but who it turns out has a face that I have seen in a number of different forms, has a show of her work at the Tate Modern. She was annoyingly talented both as a photographer (for which she is arguably more famous) and as an artist. In addition to this, you will have seen her head mangled in various ways countless times as she was a repeated muse (and lover) of Picasso. Several of those paintings are in the show, as are her paintings of him. She did both fashion, portrait and art photography. The last of these was the most engaging and she produced a number of striking images, like the hand reaching out of the shell (above left) with the two-toned ominous sky. There were some others that really appealed to me: a knight on a chessboard with an equestrian statue in the background and one of her face doubly reflected as though viewed through broken glass. She photographed herself a number of times and there was a fine wall showing these in various different sizes. She had a strong face. The photographs are good, and if you are a fan of photography then I highly recommend them. However, for me her drawings and paintings are much more interesting. She turned the table on her erstwhile paramour rendering him in much the way he rendered her, dissected and disjointed (above left). He looks like a camp clown. I like the box on the left cheek like some invading coffee cup. One painting really struck me (above right). It is, I assume, a portrait of a woman. I like the straight lines of alternating blue and gold that descend into the shadow of the strange face/platform. I also like the way the cone contrasts with the wavy hair. I found this fairly captivating and spent some time in front of it. The exhibition then shows Maar's journey from the cubist and abstract (above right) to a more realist and social, observing style (above left), shown excellently by this striking double portrait of two women. I like the two-tone red. It can be very effective having an almost constant backdrop colour. Of course, it is in fact not all one colour. The red bisects along the middle changing tones from dark to light. It is a scheme I have seen a number of people deploy and I may give it a try. This painting is also deceptively simple, but it is a piece of gentle contrasts. There are a number of paintings like this, some more figurative, some more abstract. Some of them work very well, some of them are not very interesting, but some of them have a very dynamic quality that makes them interesting. In the final room there was a large rectangular screen on which was projected, changing every few seconds, large and mainly monochromatic abstract pieces. They are quite effective displayed in this way, but facing them was this display above. Again, it is a combination of simple-seeming ink paintings and very yonic photographs. Messages are hidden within the blurs. I have been wittteringly pretensious , but this particular display very much appealed to me. I have always been drawn to Korean/Japanese and Chinese ink paintings, and some of these had the same aesthetic. It was also a very good move mounting them on a black wall.
This post has probably obscured more than it has revealed, but Maar's body of work is a very interesting one and is worth seeing. Olafur Eliasson has a very unmemorable name, but even if you don't recognise the name you probably know the guy. Remember when there was a large sun peering through mist in the turbine hall at the Tate Modern? That was him. Anyway, he is back at the Tate Modern until 5 January 2020. I have been twice. The first time I went it was a Sunday near the start of the exhibition and it was incredibly crowded. I've never seen an art show so busy. Many of the visitors were families. I got halfway round then retreated. I returned recently on a cold Tuesday. It was substantially calmer. The first room is a large selection of his concept models. It is always interesting to see somebody's working and on a smaller scale of the work you then experience. Sadly the exhibition has now finished so you will have to take my word for it. It took me a while to figure out what the show was. It's a fairground ride. A high-spec, colourful, interesting and almost spiritual fairground ride, complete with misty tunnel, hall of mirrors, dark room and light effects, such as the one above where you are back-lit and your shadow displayed in a number of different colours. But we are leaping ahead. It is worthwhile having a careful look around. The first room contains a very impressive tactile wall of moss-like substance covering all of one wall. On the floor are four different-sized, both in length and width, tanks full of water with wave machines. They generate waves of different frequency and it is fun watching them join and destroy each other. These easily distract you and it is easy to miss things, for example the rain machine dripping onto one of the windows. In the next room you see a convex mirror displaying an upside-down distorted view of the room you have just left, and this is what I mean about it being a high-spec fairground. You then have to queue to go down a long misty tunnel. You can barely see more than about an arms’ length in front of you and different coloured lights mean the mist changes from orange to white and yellow as you gently parade down it. I understand that you are legally allowed to murder anyone who has stopped to take a selfie while in the tunnel (there were lots, there are less now). You emerge slightly baffled to find a large sci-fiesque cylinder, which you can walk inside of. It is bedecked with mirrors that reflect and distort you. The next room has a series of light displays and then also the light effect you can see at the top of this blog post, which splits your shadow into a number of different colours. My favourite thing in the whole show though was in a very dark room. Sudden flashes of light reveal an ever-changing sculpture on top of a plinth. It shifts from looking like a pac-man ghost, to a flattened kraken and other weird shapes. It is in fact the thing pictured above. It is a fountain, and the flashes of light catch it in different shapes and imprint it onto your brain. I thought this was excellent and stayed there for quite a while enjoying it all. The final room contained a very pretentious and wordy wall taking the alphabet and exploring environmental themes. A large round table contains a construction set, hundreds and hundreds of different pieces that you can assemble and possibly, if you were minded, create a shape like the above. That was great fun. The exhibition continues outside where the ball-like device is. There was a display that I have seen before where yellow polarising light, here set up in a hall way and in the lifts, made everything appear black and white.
It was a great show. I enjoyed it. |
William John MackenzieI am an artist with a specialism in landscapes and still life. My contact details are here. Archives
April 2024
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