I am looking forward to this year’s Forth Valley Art Beat  

I am showing work at the Westmossside Art Collective (VENUE 35) based on my experiences of working in the Flanders Moss area every day.  This year I have been inspired by a visit I made on Christmas Eve, 2018, when the whole area was transformed by an intense frost.  I have done my best to convey this experience by a series of small oil sketches, each 150 x 150 mm.

I shall be showing paintings of a different kind in my own Studio (VENUE 37) on the south side of Flanders Moss.  Find out more here

Whitespace Gallery,  76, East Crosscauseway, Edinburgh EH8 8HQ

22nd to 27th September, 2018      12pm to 5pm

Private view Friday, 21st September, 2018

The Green Thought

This exhibition has been my project for the summer and I have been working on it since May.  I decided to be bold and make three large canvases, sized 1200 x 900 mm,  for the space in Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh.  The idea gradually came to me on train journeys, first on a trip to Newcastle to see the David Bomberg exhibition, and then on a day out to Dundee to see the Duncan of Jordanstone degree show.

Ares in the woods Photograph

Detail charcoal drawing

Detail charcoal study

Where it started

I had spent the first few months of the year “dissecting” a complicated photograph sent to me by a customer.  The picture was of a spotted horse in a twiggy winter woodland.  I tackled this by gridding the photo into 64 squares and finding the miraculous unexpected abstractions within each thumbnail.  The train journeys gave me the chance to look at the 50 million shades of green that existed in the landscape, near and far, and which would transform my twiggy drawings in paintings.

Dark trees Oil painting 1200 x 900 mm

From the train to Dundee Oil painting 1200 x 900

The  Plum Tree Oil Painting 800 x 500 mm

How I did it

I selected three photos and gradually worked across each of them to create the three large paintings.  In each case, there were moments when I despaired and lost track of how the compositon was going to work.  I masked off all but the crucial areas so that I could observe more clearly and prevent my mind interfering and confusing me.  The result was that I achieved three coherent paintings.  I did the same in the smaller paintings of the plum tree leaves.

My plan was to build on the exhibition by adding larger versions of the charcoal thumbnail drawings, which are beautiful in themselves, but which, I found, did not translate to a larger scale of 800 x 800 mm without me taking a completely different approach.  It could be that I did not have time to create very detailed drawings on this scale, which are at least as challenging as making a painting, or it could be that after this intense period of rigour and scrutiny it is time to have a play.

ALL TOO HUMAN  TATE BRITAIN APRIL 20         A  PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Walter Richard Sickert La Hollandaise c. 1906

Stanley Spencer Patricia Preece 1933

This exhibition was a perspective on British figurative art over the past 100 years, the focus being on painters who worked with the human figure as their main subject. Featured artists included Sickert (1860-1942), Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), William Coldstream (1908-1987)and  David Bomberg (1890-1957) from the earlier part of the century,  to the post war generation (Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), R. B.Kitaj (1932-2007), Frank Auerbach (b. 1931), Leon Kossoff (b. 1926), Paula Rego (b. 1935) and F. N. Souza (1924-2002).  Contemporary artists on show included  Cecily Brown (b. 1969), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977) and Jenny Saville (b. 1970)

William Coldstream Portrait of Walter A Brandt 1962-3

Euan Uglow Georgia 1973

This show was a revelation to me.  I attended the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford at a period when it was dominated by the Coldstream emphasis on precise linear drawing from observation.  Excellent training, no doubt, but contrary to my temperament, particularly at that time when art was my only means of expression.  I became distressed and frustrated at the lack of ability to express myself in this environment. Artists who shared such an experience at the Slade School, for example,  include Patrick Heron and David Bomberg himself.

David Bomberg Ronda Valley (detail) 1954

Leon Kossoff Self Portrait 11 1972

Dorothy Mead Reclining Figure 1954

Frank Auerbach Looking Towards Mornington Crescent Station, Night 1972-3

This exhibition showed that the Coldstream approach was dominant in England, but by no means definitive. Taboos were broken by David Bomberg himself who focussed on the “spirit of the mass” and subjective experience.  Many artists such as Auerbach, Kossoff and Mead were indebted to Bomberg’s classes at Borough Polytechnic.

Lucian Freud Two Plants 1977-80

Lucian Freud David and Eli 2003-4

Lucian Freud worked from intense observation but eventually transcended the extreme objectivity of the Coldstream school in his sensuous handling of paint and unflinching scrutiny and humanity of his subjects.

Francis Bacon Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne 1966

Francis Bacon Triptych (detail) 1974-77

Another taboo was crossed and ignored by the self taught maestro, Francis Bacon, who distorted the figure in extreme ways and used photographic sources to express a deep sense of angst and pain at the human existence.  The Goan artist  Souza painted in a symbolic and non-representational way.

Paula Rego The Family 1988

R.B. Kitaj To Live in Peace (The Singers) 1973-4

In the modernist aesthetic of the Coldstream school, formal abstract qualities of line, shape and colour were considered most important.  “Illustration” and “narrative” was frowned upon as somehow inferior, yet Kitaj and Paula Rego painted human social dynamics and stories as their subject matter.

Cecily Brown Teenage Wildlife 2003

Jenny Saville Reverse (detail) 2002-3

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Coterie of Questions 2015

Younger figurative painters included Cecily Brown, Jenny Saville and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

It was not until very recently that I returned to working from the life model in my attempt to improve my painting and knowledge of anatomy.  I did this because I wanted to develop my equestrian art and there is little on offer in that department.  I found myself still working in the traditional way that I had been taught.  David Bomberg termed this ideology the “hand and eye disease”, and although some artists transcended it (Lucian Freud being a prime example), many became limited by it.

It was only because of my need to express deeper feeling and different ways of working that I have recently encountered teachers and artists who think in another way.  Alan McGowan, Martin Campos and Pauline Agnew come to mind. I was amazed that the early studies had remained so powerful in my life and that I had been unable until now to work in another way, in spite of an inner energy in myself that forced me to circumnavigate this ideology.  Only by working freely with colour on fabric (well outside the artistic canon) had I been able to work naturally.

The world has greatly changed especially over the past 50 years. In Britain we have a more liberal and prosperous life.  Homosexuality is legalised,  women are far more equal in expectation and reality.  The bitterness of gay artists such as Bacon is expressed as a scream of pain and frustration in his work, but the art world of the time was also full of misogyny which made it difficult for a woman to progress.  Fashions in art also come and go.  For years figurative art was neglected and unregarded, while abstraction and conceptualism became the way to work.  Even Lucian Freud was unable to sell his work for years, but he kept going in his metier.  There are signs that the human body and human experience is becoming acknowledged again as a form of art and figurative art.

This was a marvellous and complex show, and I appreciate the curators for bringing together such diverse approaches to making art.  Apologies for the artists I have omitted.  The Tate catalogue “All Too Human” is excellent, with full illustrations and several interesting articles about this period.