In Conversation with Naomi Frears and John Emmanuel

As part of the August programme at St Ives School of Painting, an informal series of conversational meetings has been introduced, and finding myself free to attend this one I felt that it would be interesting to go.

John Emmanuel has been a resident of Porthmeor Studios for 30 years, and is one of the longest still there. Self taught, he produces textured abstract surfaces which marry elements of the human form with the Penwith landscape.

Naomi Frears is one of the most recent to have moved into Porthmeor Studios, having been there since 2005. Her work is partially abstract and part realist, and ghostly forms often hover in the image as a result of her process of making and scraping back. Originally trained in printmaking, it is sometimes possible to determine a specific area which has been influenced by a printer’s rather than painter’s technique.

In many ways John has been Naomi’s mentor, and it was clear from the outset that they have a close bond while developing their individual visions separately. Indeed John stressed the importance of having one really good artist friend-one who you can talk with about anything. When he first arrived at Porthmeor, his was John Wells.

The talk ranged across all sorts of areas, with side excursions thrown in by questions asked from the attendees, so I am attempting to record what I can clearly remember.

Materials

Both John and Naomi use oils, with acrylic media and sometimes paint in the underpainting levels. They paint on canvas or prepared board, sometimes collaging elements onto the picture plane and sequentially scraping back or building up many layers of glazes. Naomi admits to being a colour addict and says she probably has far too many tubes of paint, whereas John is keen to point out that you don’t really need that many colours, or indeed brushes, to make work, and tends to work from a fairly limited palette.

Studio practice

Naomi joked that this was the key secret which all of us were dying to know the answer to, that, once mastered, would magically transform us into “real” artists, and added that actually it was really more like a day in the office, with the usual coffee breaks when they would stick their heads out of the door and catch up with the other residents on news and gossip. John added that the real advantage was having a dedicated space, everything was around you and there was no interruption caused by the need to put away or get out work upon arrival. Pictures of both artists’ studios are on their respective websites.

Voice and vision

John spoke at length about the need to have a clear focus of intent during the process of making work. He also suggested that if a dead end was reached, not to be shy about going away and doing something completely different. In reference to Naomi, he remembered her becoming stuck at one point and had asked the question “What is it you feel like doing? You should do that then.”

Naomi described how her working methods often meant that a piece evolved into intent at some point through their creation, or changed into something else. She tried to explain how to stay open to what is happening on the canvas and realise where it may be going.

Self confidence and motivation

Both admitted that there is nothing worse than a poor reception to their work, and Naomi in particular said how she practically lived in fear of a negative response and that it could really bring her down. John, more pragmatically, suggested that a knock occasionally was a good opportunity to review work with a critical eye.

As both artists work full time from a dedicated studio, they felt that motivation was easier to maintain, in that they travel to their studio, shut the door and work uninterrupted in their own space. Both have previously worked from a room at home or part-time, and had experienced the lack of continuity that working in this way can entail.

Sketchbooks

We were able to see sketchbooks from both John and Naomi. John is a meticulous sketchbook user, and a whole book can be used just chasing down an idea. Of the two he brought, one was filled with collage of figures cut from newspapers, where he was seeking the exploration and abstraction of the human form. The margins were crowded with notes. The other was full of colourful oil pastel studies which he had done when on a week’s “holiday”, he had taken himself off to nearby Clodgy Point and recorded the colours and landscapes of an area he loves. Having commented that the sketches didn’t really tie in with his other work, he went on to say “I suppose I have made rather an icon of Clodgy Head- it has such a distinctive shape, and you see it in my work, in the skylines, I use it a lot.”

Naomi, while carrying a small sketchbook all the time, laughed depreciatingly and commented we would all see how bad she was at drawing. Her pages are surprisingly uncrowded, with brief notations of shapes and people, often in biro or felt pen and (in this book) mostly simple line with no tonal notations. Even a tiny head or statue will eventually make it into a painting, not necessarily as the main feature but to round out the story, and she showed us a couple of specific examples with the help of some exhibition catalogues she had also brought. Later, reading an essay on her website which mentioned her specific and meticulous drawing, I was surprised because there was little evidence of that in what Naomi showed us, and in fact she said she preferred to work up her outlines directly on the canvas.

Self taught v. art school

John is wholly self-taught, having trained as a signwriter. He stressed the importance of having a focussed vision but felt that he had been able to develop his own work without undue pressure from tutelage.

Naomi was of the opinion that she had not learnt anything from art college and only began her learning process when she began her practice.

However, both recognised the value in group participation and networking and acceded that in some areas of the country, as well as abroad, there was a tendency toward snobbery against those artists who had not attended an art school.

Exhibitions, galleries and dealers

A normal period for an exhibition would be two years, and in that time the artist would normally produce about 20-25 pieces to comprise the body of work. Naomi usually only looks to produce around 10 pieces as her method of working is slow, and she says that being under pressure to produce more would not enable her to make the paintings come right. She stressed the importance of having a strong relationship with a gallery so that each understands where the other is coming from.

John has had a varied approach to selling, and although he dealt with galleries originally he spent time selling through dealers, which he now regrets. One of the biggest cautionary notes he raised was that dealers want too much, and can put far too much of your work out there, either flooding the market and devaluing or losing the presentation of the theme by including work which is more experimental. He also said his name disappeared for years as he was not being promoted, he was still making work but very much behind the scenes.

In all it was a very interesting evening, both in seeing Naomi and John’s passion for their work, and learning that they too suffer the same doubts and crises of confidence as we do.

Examples of their work and biographies can be seen on their websites:

http://www.naomifrears.com/

http://www.johnemanuel.co.uk/Pages/Painting.htm

Pentimenti and Restatements

A pentimento is an alteration to a drawing or painting where evidence of the previous work can be seen, showing where the artist has made a new decision.

Evidence can be seen in either the underdrawing or any of the subsequent layers, and most examples from the Old Masters have only been found by the use of x-ray and infrared imaging techniques, although as oil paint becomes more transparent over time, an underpainted section may show through a reworked version.

Pentimenti in drawings are easier to see, and examples often quoted are found in Leonardo da Vinci’s and Edgar Degas’ work, such as the multiple adjustments of line around the shoulder area below.

Ballet Dancer seen from behind, Degas, c.1870s

 

As more examples come to light, it has become clear that pentimenti are very common in the work of the Old Masters. They play an important part in determining the originality of a work as there should be none or at least less in subsequent copies. Painters such as Rembrandt, Titian and Caravaggio appear to have worked directly onto the canvas and thus corrections and changes are going to occur more frequently.

Marks which reveal a totally different subject are not generally classed as pentimenti. Often such examples are where the artist has begun a new work over a previous, abandoned canvas, for example Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist”. These significant or different changes are referred to in some sources as “restatements”. Picasso had begun two distinct works beneath the final layer which were identified by x-ray and infrared in 1998.

x-ray showing earlier compositions

infrared image showing woman's face

 

 

In a slight deviation from the subject, during my research I came across this site http://www.webexhibits.org/feast/analysis/reconstructing.html which examines a painting begun by Bellini, reworked by Dossi and finished by Titian, which shows the process of restatement very clearly.

 

 

A Brief History of Landscape Painting

It seems like common sense that before I embark on the next assignment I should familiarise myself with how landscape has been portrayed through the years. My knowledge of art history is sketchy at best, although there are three specific research projects in this section to begin to remedy this, and it seemed that researching the development of the genre would help place the practical exercises in context.

My first brief in this assignment was to look at how different artists have depicted landscape, so it seems logical to examine the development of landscape painting in an historical timeline, particularly as my knowledge of art history prior to the twentieth century is practically non-existent.

Landscape has been painted from Classical times, although more often used as a decorative mural on villa walls than as a subject in its own right. It did not gain popularity until the Renaissance, when the idea of the land as a place for pleasure was reborn. Initially it was used as a backdrop to religious scenes or portraits, as shown in this work Madonna and child with Saints (c. 1454) by Alessio Baldovinetti.

As accuracy in depiction improved, so did the proportions of the figures within them, and there was increased use of colour to suggest the mood of the overall composition. This process continued to evolve through the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.

By the seventeenth century there were two main schools of landscape. The Italian school remained idealised and classical, and was not highly regarded as standalone landscape representation, as portraiture was still seen as preferable. In the Netherlands, recently free of Spanish rule, people eschewed the Catholic artworks and found national pride in depictions of their own country’s landscape. However, the use of light and colour continued to be heavily influenced by the Italian style at the end of the century, and artists such as Aelbert Cuyp produced mannered and stylistic works on these lines. A typical example of his work, Landscape with a Hunt (1650-55), is shown below.

In the eighteenth century, the fashionable “Grand Tour” set wanted to buy souvenirs of the places in Europe they visited. In a grandiose forerunner to the picture postcard, artists responded to demand for landscapes inhabited by romantic ruins or dramatic architecture. Sometimes the artist would travel with their wealthy patron, recording the adventures of the Tour. One of the best known artists of the day was Canaletto, as Venice was one of the most popular destinations.

Closer to home the focus moved to France and England in respect of a new landscape tradition. In France, Watteau invented the “fete galante”, pastoral idylls showing picnics and walks in the countryside. They have a fantasy element in their carefully constructed arrangements and several suggest quite racy exploits in the course of the “picnic”.

Watteau, Le fetes Venitiennes, (c.1718)

 Meanwhile Gainsborough in England was making preliminary studies and even models to make his landscapes more accurate, although it is interesting to note that his group portraits set in landscape have all the quality of bad Photoshopping in respect of the lighting on the figures (a case of giving the customer what they want?!), and it is the rural and peasant views which seem to integrate across the picture surface.

 

Across the Atlantic, American artists were using the landscape as a means to create their sense of history, often on an epic scale to reflect the enormity of the new land they now roamed, or emphasising the raw power of nature. Thomas Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone helped to persuade Congress to award its National Park status.

Thomas Moran, “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” (1872)

When photography was invented in the nineteenth century, artists were freed from their former role of merely recording the scene and could seek out new ways of portraying it. New equipment, such as premixed paint in portable tubes and boxes, allowed artists to paint outdoors and have a direct experience of the landscape, and the railways allowed them to travel more readily. By the latter half of the century, the Impressionists were exhibiting work which appeared unfinished, but was all about catching the light and mood of the moment.

Claude Monet, Poplars on the River Epte (1891)

 Art was rebelling against the strictures of the old Academies.

New media in the twentieth century has opened up many different ways to portray landscape. Many new styles and movements developed, and new techniques were employed in increasingly unreal or abstract renditions of landscape. Urbanisation has now had an impact on subject matter, possibly best known in Lowry’s depictions of industrial townscapes. Below is shown “Market scene in a Northern Town” (1939).

In some cases, landscape became a means to express an emotional journey, much as Terry Frost does with his “A Walk along the Harbour” (1960), left, and Peter Lanyon with “Porthleven” (1951), right.

       

 

As environmental awareness grows, a picture can often have a political or environmental message about the plight of the countryside. Hawaiian artist Christian Reise Lasser uses colourful marine landscapes to celebrate and raise awareness of the fragile shore around his native islands, often using a split composition to show both surface and underwater landscape. The Majestic Kingdom is a typical example of this device and is shown below.

Other artists have taken the tools they habitually used and have explored new ways of working with them, both pushing the medium to its limits and integrating new media and substrates. A particular favourite of mine is Michael Morgan, who uses watercolour in a way I have never seen before to create richly textured imagined landscapes.

In the twenty-first century, there are now a wide range of approaches to landscape. New technology has brought new ways of creating art in the digital age. Satellite imagery has inspired some artists, myself included, to paint landscapes seen from space, as they seek a distant objectivity from the immediate pressures of our society, and the growth of digital media has been embraced by some, shown most recently by David Hockney: A Bigger Picture (2012) an i-Pad generated landscape exhibition of 2012, in which he has used the most cutting edge technology to revisit the countryside around his native birthplace.

Collage and printmaking inspired by Sandra Blow

In June 2012 I had the opportunity to attend a workshop taking the work of Sandra Blow as its starting point. While the course title stated collage and screenprinting, it transpired that the printmaking component was to be a brief introduction to the subject, but after several objections from the six of us attending, this was later changed so that we had a day and a half printmaking at the end of the course.

I was unfamiliar with the work of Sandra Blow, as although she lived in St Ives in her later life she is somewhat removed from the usual line-up of "St Ives artists". Our first morning was spent having a guided tour of Bullen Court, her home and studio, where our instruction was to "draw whatever catches your attention". (In hindsight this could have been better communicated as none of us understood how we would be using the material we gathered. Cameras were also allowed although most of us hadn't brought one and had to make do with our mobiles instead.)

Jon Grimble, Sandra's agent and executor, led us around and the factual content was well sprinkled with anecdotes as he was a long-term friend. He and his partner Denny Long now operate a gallery from the site while preserving the workshop and living space. We had the privilege of viewing an early painting done on her first visit to St Ives, only recently purchased and re-located to Cornwall from America, where it had lain hidden for many years.



Jon Grimble shows us Sandra Blow's "Cornwall" (1958) in her studio at Bullens Court, St Ives


 I made a quick tonal sketch of the canvas. Later, over coffee, we wandered around the showroom looking at some of Sandra's sketchbooks showing her working methods and systematic repetition of a theme or idea- it puts my experimental sketchbooks to shame and has made me rethink how I should approach preparation for a project.

Back at the studios, our tutor Liz Luckhurst encouraged us to select different small sections of some of our drawings and chase down the permutations found in the picture plane. Using viewfinders to isolate sections, we drew lots of boxes, both square and rectangular, filling them with the lines or shapes we found.

 I found it an interesting exercise in abstraction, not one which I would have used to generate a painting perhaps, but I used to employ a similar selection process in developing screen print designs years ago at school. Our final task for the day was to produce a white on black and black on white collage of two of the studies we had produced. Immediately I was out of my comfort zone- collage is something I have rarely done and as an alien way of mark-making it completely threw me. Liz encouraged me not to get too stressed about it and suggested using a mixture of torn and cut edges and "see what happened".

The following day I arrived late and was pichforked into an intensive series of exercises with collage- we'd had to step the pace up a bit to make time for the printmaking part. I remember thinking that I spent longer that morning staring helplessly at bits of torn paper rather than doing stuff, but somehow I managed to produce quite a few pieces by lunchtime- an informal affair where most of us were still working and refuelling at the same time as a BBC documentary/interview with Sandra Blow was being played.

The afternoon was spent being introduced to the techniques of simple printmaking, with an emphasis on being able to do it at home without too many complex materials or resources. While I thought that this would be the part I would enjoy, having screen-printed before, I found it harder to decide what to do than I had with the collage! In part I think this was because I wasn't clear in my mind about how to translate images between media, especially two media which behaved and were applied in completely different ways.

Eventually I developed some very simple torn paper shapes with which to resist the ink, and worked up a few backgrounds to give me a basis on which to work the following day.

On the morning of the third day I found it incredibly difficult to get started, and it was only after fiddling around with some found arrangements of collage material on my trolley (above) that I eventually settled to make a screen using a dual stage resist medium. None of us, tutor included, had used this before, so the results we had were variable. I painted some of my lines too thin so the resist bled under them, although some lines opened up slightly with repeated prints. I had selected a vaguely organic motif from the work I had done on the first day.

Discouraged by the poor quality of the output, I returned to the torn paper strip technique, and began to add pieces of collage to them. The one below shows an accidental result where I had not seen the paper strips had transferred to the paper, so they only partially came off leaving a thin layer of paper adhered to the surface.

This eventually cumulated in a red and orange grid with corrugated strips and a black sun, which I felt was the best piece I had produced during the course.

I really enjoyed the course, not just for the opportunity to be challenged by new materials and methods but as there ware only six of us we had ample time to talk with each other and the tutors, gaining feedback and insights which are the invaluable component of working in a group. It was fascinating to see how each of us developed a completely different aspect of our original drawings, and we had six completely distinct bodies of work by the end of the three days. At the very end, both tutors went round each of us in turn and critiqued our work, which we all found valuable and helpful.