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

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.

George Stubbs 1724-1806

George Stubbs, self portrait

The son of a currier (specialist leather finisher) and leather merchant, he had a brief apprenticeship to a painter and engraver where he soon left as he objected to copying.

In around 1745-51 he studied human anatomy at York County Hospital. It was a subject which had long fascinated him, and I might speculate that he would have had an early introduction to anatomy as his father's trade would have doubtless brought him into contact with all the other processes of leather production from slaughterhouse upwards. This led to him contributing the drawings for a book on midwifery.

Illustration from "A Complete New System of Midwifery" (1751)

In 1756 he and his common law wife Mary Spencer spent 18 months dissecting horses, this cumulated in the publication of his book "The Anatomy of the Horse" ten years later. The original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy.

In 1759 the 3rd Duke of Richmond commissioned three large paintings, as his work ws already seen to be far more anatomically correct than those of his peers, and his depiction of a short coat showed the animal's musculature to best advantage. Some of his work broke with tradition in having a plain background and the best known is "Whistlejacket".

Whistlejacket (about 1762)

This helped establish him as a major artist of the day. Many of his patrons were the noblemen who were to form the Jockey Club. He painted portraits as well as horses, often adding in a groom or stableboy portrayed in a realistic manner and pose.



Pumpkin with a Stable-lad (1774)

 In later life he painted a series of dogs, and produced some paintings of wild exotic animals which he observed in private menageries.



Zebra (1762-3)

 These were often developed into dramatic paintings often depicting horses startled or attacked by lions. The dynamic poses allowed him to fully illustrate the muscles and tendons to accentuate the drama of the scene.



Horse attacked by a lion (1762)

His work in studying the horse remains the principal reference work to this day and is required reading for trainee vetinarians.

Ben Nicholson and his still life pictures

 

Ben Nicholson had little natural drawing ability, and was pushed toward the study of art largely because his parents could not comprehend that he had not inherited their own talents. Finding himself enrolled at the Slade, he frequently bunked off classes with his friend Paul Nash, also a (self-confessed) draughtsman of ineptitude. Often they would play billiards at the Gower Hotel, where he later attributed the colours and forms of the balls as being an important factor in his road towards abstraction. His sole offering for the Slade’s in-house exhibition was a striped jug, and he left the school the following year.

In 1924, after his first forays into pure abstraction, he returned for a time to the humble jug and mug, which he painted in silhouette, with one or the other form competing for dominance in the space. These were much admired by Jim Ede, then assistant to the Director at the Tate, who as a result obtained several works either gifted by Ben or at a knockdown price.

The chance meeting with Alfred Wallis in 1928 was to have a profound effect on Ben’s approach to landscape, and later that year his painting 1928 (Porthmeor Beach, St Ives) included an architectural feature on the right-hand side (which Checkland construes as a gable end, but is more probably one of the dominant three arches in the pier at St Ives).

The picture is clearly painted over another image giving it additional depth, and is generally regarded as the precursor of these layered landscape/still life works.

Ben’s collection of mugs, jugs and jars was precious to him and travelled with him throughout his various homes during his life. Drawings of these are often simple outlines, often overlapping each other, superimposed onto an abstract background which sometimes have elements of landscape in them. He developed a signature fusion of abstract and realism during the war years, when there was no market for progressive “Modernist” art, and often portrayed views over rooftops and out of upper windows, a device he had previously seen in Cubism, combined with still life groupings in the foreground.

The works showing a more realistic and definite landscape setting he referred to as his “pot boilers”, or “Cornish best-selling schemes”, terms which were designed to indicate how contemptuous he was of the need to be so commercial, and they were produced purely from the need to bring some money in during the early years of his relationship with Barbara Hepworth, who had little time to work herself as she was exhausted from looking after the triplets and in poor health as a result.

Possibly the most prolific output happened in February 1945, when, having secured scholarship funding for the triplets to Dartington Hall in Devon, the pressure was on to raise the necessary balance, and he completed twelve paintings in just ten days, of “fishing boats and flags on mugs and still life generally”. These include the well-known images including Union Jacks, which are often erroneously attributed to a celebration of the end of the war in Europe, although in fact most were painted before VE day.

The series ranges from 1944 with works such as Carnstabba Farm (above), a relatively conventional view, to the late 1950s, e.g. August 1956 (boutique fantasque), in which the background has been reduced to fields of colour only suggestive of the landscape. In between, the landscape sits at varying degrees of tension with the still life elements, a particular example being November 11-47 (Mousehole) (shown below) where the realism of the scenery is at odds with the lopsided panel of still life shapes in the right foreground, and at the other end of the scale the later work 1959 Argolis, painted in Greece, synthesises the tabletop with the sky and sea completely.

 

While Ben himself clearly had a low view of what he achieved in these paintings, moving away from his ideal of total, pure abstraction, there is no doubt that he inadvertently hit on a unique pictorial style, one which has become as recognisable, if not more so, than the White Reliefs with which he first shook the world of 20^th century art.

Artists Working in Contrasting Styles

I have struggled with this exercise for a long time, having been asked to find two artists, one of whom works in a rigorous and controlled way, and another whose style is expressive and loose. Eventually, while looking through “Vitamin D”, I isolated two of the featured artists which I felt met the criteria and could be compared.

The first is Spanish artist Ernesto Caivano, who works in New York. His drawing style is linear, precise, with the elements carefully plotted within the picture plane to arrive at a dynamic and interesting composition. His subject matter comes from a post-apocalyptic novel of his own writing, dealing with themes of bifurcation, polarity and duality, and he produces works in a non-linear order to the story. The works are of varied sizes and worked in black ink, and have a carefully crafted illustrative feel to them.

While the text mentions his occasional use of colour in vignette pieces, none are illustrated in the book. I found a couple of examples using colour, along with other works, on a gallery site here: http://whitecube.com/artists/ernesto_caivano/

The drawings are intricate and complex, with an incredible range of marks and a brilliantly inventive use of negative space. The landscapes e.g.The Land Inhibited (2003) show a strong Oriental stylistic influence, while a portrait of one of the main characters, Breathing the Code (2002) reminds me of the fantasy art of Chris Achilleos in the arrangement of elements and the pose.

The second artist is Lithuanian Mindaugas Lukosaitis. He has used factual accounts of partisans in the guerrilla war against the Red Army during the Soviet occupation to  produce a series of around 100 drawings, titled “Resistance”. His pencil drawings have a sketchy, slightly unfinished look, with variation in the amounts of tone employed rather than a consistent finish, and typically show one or a few figures involved in active conflict with an unseen enemy. The compositional style is very much like the story-boarding for a film or comic strip, utilising unusual angles and close-up figures to convey the dynamism in the scene.

I was unable to find a site with a representative example of his work, however typing his name into a Google image search brings up a wide range of pieces including some not directly relating to the Resistance series.

While these could be seen exclusively as a mythologized patriotic statement, they also beg the question of how we identify and generate resistance to our current world view. I find them particularly interesting as I work with a number of Lithuanians, and while being largely ignorant of their history, I am watching this new generation coming to grips with how to define their lives against their current reality.

So, two different artists, using different styles, but both telling a narrative to explore how the individual relates to the external.

Sven Berlin, his Dark Monarch, and the Tower

I have just finished reading the recently republished "Dark Monarch" by Sven Berlin, expecting to discover a behind the scenes look at the art colony of St Ives, filled with tidbits of gossip about their antics.

In point of fact the book really has very little about the activities of the group other than as a means to advance and string together the narrative, which is a loosely autobiographical account using alternate names for places and people. St Ives becomes "Cuckoo Town" presumably because of the number of infidelities described.

At the opening, Sven, only recently returned to the town, is coming to terms with the breakup of his marriage. It progresses through a poignant and ultimately tragic love affair to a final betrayal of Sven's personal sense of freedom and integrity. Told exclusively from Sven's viewpoint, some events are occaionally subsumed by his violent bouts of temper: in writing surfacing as occasionally libellous vitriol. It is difficult to decide how much these mood swings were caused by his self-confessed use of barbiturates, or whether an underlying psychological condition had been triggered during his breakdown following war service.

While his demons are personified in the folkloric Dark Monarch of the title, another recurrent theme in the book is that of his "Tower", a building he rented as a studio and workshop. I believe the symbolic relevance of the Tower, taken in context with other events in the book, gives an enhanced understanding of Sven's ambivalent attitudes to his life, friendships, and sense of both place and security.

Having first obtained the Tower in a shared arrangement with some acquaintances, he is then forced to fight over possession of the upper floor, which is to him the most important area of the building. Subsequently having obtained sole use of a space one could suppose he would settle into, instead he seems to have a constant stream of visitors, party-goers and lodgers - one having escaped from the mental hospital - and one is left with the impression that the Tower never truly became the hermitage and refuge that he looked for at the outset. He distances himself geographically from the town in the book by placing the tower on a (ficticious) tidal island.

Today the Tower still stands, by the slipway to Porthgwidden Beach adjacent to the public toilets which were built on the space Sven formerly used for working on his sculptures, and which represent one of the final great betrayals at the close of the book. It is a nondescript edifice, easily overlooked, barely seen from the road until one is level with the toilet block. The window facing the road is now blind; boarded over. The door is painted the ubiquitous blue of St Ives. Intriguingly the east window was ajar and a curtain of contemporary design was half-drawn, suggesting current occupation.

I had gone in search of it because the most recent photo found on the internet was taken in 2009. There has been some building development in the area, and I couldn't honestly remember seeing the building despite frequent walks in that area of town. It has a mystique by virtue of being overshadowed and camouflaged by the toilet block, and, in its uncompromising utilitarian location, has a certain pathos in the very fact of its continuing existence.

On leaving St Ives, Sven moved to Hampshire, where later he wrote the "Dark Monarch", and which was to bring all his demons crashing down on him. The resulting libel suits ruined him financially and the book was withdrawn only days after publication. Now, the manuscript has been republished, following permission from interested parties, and enable us to see a self-critique every bit as incisive as his comments on others.

For me, his prophetic vision of what St Ives would become at the hands of bureaucracy and commercialism (even then most of the town was owned by a handful of families) set the seal on Sven Berlin's ability to clearly see the truth beyond the petty manouverings of those around him, and sadly, all too many of his predictions have borne fruit.

Dark Monarch, Sven Berlin 1962 (2nd ed.,Published 2009 by Finishing Publications)
ISBN: 978-0-904477-320

Artists who exemplify detailed drawing

I find this an interesting research project as I have only recently begun to appreciate drawing properly as a finished work in its own right, rather than part of the process to a final painting, and to focus on finding artists who are dedicated practitioners of drawing proved to be rather a challenge. Certain names will inevitably spring to mind from the historical artists, for example da Vinci and Durer, as their scientific approach required great accuracy in recording each image, and more recently George Stubbs whose anatomical studies of the horse are still used by modern day vetenarians.

I chose to look at the work of Albrecht Durer as I know less of his body of work than I should do. Actually tracking down his drawings is difficult as his work is bound up with the amazingly beautiful engravings, however, these illustrate his mark-making abilities equally well. It is known that he was an adept draughtsman from an early age, as there are surviving drawings from his earlier years. His fascination with Italy at the start of the Renaissance, led him to travel and learn new techniques, which upon his return to Germany he disseminated through engravings and publications.

Of the drawings I have located, the most beautifully rendered (to me) is the study of hands with the sleeve of what appears to be a monk's robe.

Durer made many such studies in the course of developing larger works and alterpieces, but the sensitivity of tone in the drawing captures every imperfection of the model's skin in an amazingly lifelike way.

The need to find a contemporary artist proved to be the most difficult. I had it in mind to search for botanical artists initially, as detail is something one tends to associate with scientific work, but the specific technique of drawing rather than painting or print techniques proved elusive to track down, most of the search paths leading to watercolourists.

By chance, on a visit to St Ives, I saw some work by Jon Tremaine. He produces extremely detailed pen drawings of wild animals, whose outlines are are imaginatively filled with flora and fauna of their native habitat. I have seen his work periodically over the last couple of years but this time wrote his name down to pursue further. ( website here )

There is an interesting video here where Jon talks about his work and develops a new piece, while sitting in the window of the St Ives gallery currently representing him. His work is all the more remarkable for having been self taught, and illustrates a sound grip of tonal value as he selects which animal has the best overall tone to fill a particular shape in the drawing. Using the finest nib sizes, many areas of his drawings employ stippling and a work can take many months to complete. The video briefly touches on the reference material and how Jon uses a sketchbook although it would have been interesting to know more. I hope I can get to meet Jon at some point as he comes across as a lucid and interesting conversationalist.

Open Studios Cornwall- The Exhibition

The Chapel Gallery, Gulval, Penzance http://www.thechapelgallery.co.uk/ open 10.00am-5.00pm

Each year, many local artists and artisans open their studios to the public throughout August, and while I have often picked up a catalogue, I've never found the time to organise a round robin of them. This exhibition, and relatively new gallery, was recommended to me while talking to a visitor, and it seemed such a good idea to be able to see a snapshot of participants' work in one place.

The former Methodist chapel which houses the gallery has not been refurbished, so upon entry you find a tiered amphitheatre of pews facing the original altar, pulpit and choir. Although this building does not have an upper gallery, it does have the same high ceilings as others, which allow copious wall space for hanging, and the central open area houses cabinets of jewellery, sculpture and ceramic work. The immediate impression on entering is almost overwhelming, although a noisy if friendly greeting by cocker spaniel Laurence soon reinstated an sense of balance.

This year, 205 artists were involved in Open Studios, and of them 88 were invited to take part in this exhibition. Paul Broderick, the director, proved to be a friendly and informative host and asked with interest about my own practice and studies, before discussing certain of the exhibits and artists in relation to my particular preferences.

In particular there were a number of works by Noel Betowski http://www.noelbetowski.com/ , an abstract landscape artist whose rich layered colours entice you to look deeper into the suggested and yet familiar land and townscapes of Penwith.

Watercolour has never been my strong point, nor yet a particular interest, but a pair of large seascapes by Nigel Haward were simply outstanding in both their minimalism and colours; one work was of the Brisons, near Land's End, the other a rough sea looking over Godrevy Lighthouse. The amount of clean white paper left on the paper is surely a lesson to all of us that less is more- his work can be viewed in his gallery at http://www.nigelhaward.co.uk/ .

A work by Sheila Holland titled "The Kiss" caught my eye as the strange creatures depicted reminded me of a softer form of some of Odilon Redon's bestiary. (http://www.sheilaholland.co.uk/ )

Elizabeth Perry was also interesting, I loved the intense colours in her "Mining Landscape", so typical of the Pendeen area, and some smaller work made interesting used of acrylic media in the depiction of rockpools. It was rewarding to be able to get so close to the work and try to determine the media and techniques employed, as the subject is one I have used in the past. (There is an American artist of the same name (dot com) online: this Cornish artist's site is under contruction at http://www.elizabethperry.co.uk/ ).

What I at first took to be an oil painting by Lorna Wiles, of sunlit grasses against a cobalt sky, turned out to be pastel applied to a prepared canvas support. It is described as mixed media and I was unable to determine whether the ground was acrylic or oil-based, although I'm fairly sure the pastel was hard conte as the lines retained a strong identity when viewed up close. There is an amazing online gallery of diverse styles at http://www.lornawilesgallery.com/ including textiles and abstract work.

I could go on at length as there really were so many different ouevres which caught my eye, and I'll certainly be visiting again. A real bonus was the catalogue which has all the work photographed in monochrome in situ, and many colour plates to remind one of the visit, a bargain for £2!

Next up is a hanging of works by Michael Strang, which as I understood is to allow selection of pieces for the Ashmolean, and later, to ensure parity with an earlier exhibition of female artists, one which will focus on the male artists currently working in Cornwall. For anyone interested in our local artistic community, the directory site http://www.artistsincornwall.com/  is a good starting point, although they now include work by those with a connection to the area and not necessarily working in the county.

Odilon Redon 1840-1916

Bertrand-Jean Redon was born to a French father and Creole mother in Bordeaux. The name Odilon, by which he was commonly known, derived from his mother’s name Odile. The family were prosperous, having built up successful business interests in America.

Redon always showed an interest in drawing and won his first prize at the age of ten. The majority of his childhood was spent on his uncle’s estate near Peyrelebad in the Medoc, and he spent many hours observing nature, and running wild with the local children while absorbing their tales of witches and folklore prevalent in the area.

From the age of fifteen he studied drawing with the artist Stanislas Gorin, who taught him the principles of Romantic art i.e. to make every line express both sensibility and form, rejecting all rules and formulae.

His father wanted Redon to study architecture, however this was brought to a swift halt when Redon failed his entrance examination at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts 1857. Back home he began to study sculpture, and was also introduced to etching and lithography by Rodolphe Bresnin who was to become a close friend and mentor 1863. In 1864 he was finally accepted to the Beaux Arts to study painting, however, he rebelled against the establishmentarian values he found and turned away from the formal art world, into almost certain obscurity.

Redon turned to his friend Bresnin for guidance, who introduced him to the work of Durer and Rembrandt, and taught him to transform nature through imagination. Redon turned to graphic art, principally in black and white which he referred to as his “noirs”. The subject matter was often both fantastic and disturbing, using a cross-section of references, and show elements of Surrealism, a movement which was to surface later, and of which he was critical. The deep tones of the layered charcoal, built up with layers of fixative, have an almost sumptuous quality, which, like all his work, provides a feast for the senses although the subjects may be macabre and unfamiliar.

Link to NY MoMA Redon collection here - this has a good selection of his work which can be viewed clearly

Recent research by the American Institute of Conservation (article here ) has helped to identify various media used in the noirs, which has subsequently allowed better dating of his work. Primarily, Redon used vine charcoal, sometimes soaked in oil, which gave a brown-black tone as the oil worked into the paper surface. Later he also used forms of compressed charcoal and a type of black chalk, exploring new blacks as they became available to him. He preferred to use a balsam-based fixative which discoloured to a warm yellow tone and which he exploited, similarly using toned papers, so that in fact the “Noirs” do contain elements of colour. Redon himself stated that he always used coloured paper for all his Noirs, and that they should not be referred to as black and white for this reason. He also saturated the back of each piece with fixative as a final process.

His application methods were as varied as the black media he used, although generally he would tone the paper with ground charcoal before working with oiled charcoal. He stumped, scraped, erased, smudged and overworked the surface, in some cases using his fingers and possibly scraping back with a fingernail, as his prints are clearly visible on certain work. In later work he used black pastel in the top layers which is visible by its blue-black cast over the warmer tone of the underdrawing.

He had a brief interruption when called to serve in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. Following the war he returned to Paris to work almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. His first album was published in 1879, entitled Dans le Reve (In Dream).

He married in 1880, and inspired by his wife Camille began to use pastels in his work. His paintings from this period display a confident use of colour and light, such as Rocks on the beach (c1883) (oil on canvas) and illustrates the solid grounding he had in colour media prior to his output of the pastels.

His first son Jean was born in 1886, but died at the age of six months. This plunged Redon into a “melancholy of the mind” which was to endure until the birth of his second son Ari in 1889.

In the early 1880s Redon was introduced to the writings of Flaubert, Baudelaire  and Edgar Allan Poe, which were to have a profound effect on his work.

In 1884 the publication of a cult novel, Rebours (Against Nature) whose protagonist was a collector of Redon’s work, was to bring his work to increased public awareness.

In 1890 Redon suffered a religious crisis, in part due to the suicide of his close friend Armand Clavaud, who had instructed and informed him in many aspects of natural history. This was followed by a serious illness, and it was after this time that he turned increasingly to pastels. His work transformed into an optimistic and colourful style, often inspired by mythological themes, and the many studies of floral still life were greatly admired by Henri Matisse, among others.

His techniques in colour pastel developed dramatically through his career. Early work was often applied over noirs, using them in the same way as a painter prepares an underpainting. At a later date he experimented with many ways of application including wetting the pastel and using brushes, while continuing with his repertoire of stumping, incising etc. which he already employed. Initially he continued to use balsamic fixative, but later changed to a non-yellowing type and gradually became more sparing in its use. Towards the end of his life he used it rarely, and never on the final layer, thus preserving the colour and luminosity of the pastel pigment.

He died in 1916, and while he was then a distinguished artist in his field, he remained until the end a very private person.

Of his drawing he said;

 "My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."

Patrick Caulfield -positive and negative space

PATRICK CAULFIELD (1936-2005)

Patrick Caulfield was a painter and printmaker known for his Pop Art canvasses, and was a contemporary of David Hockney and Allen Jones.

For many years I had a postcard of Pottery (1969) without ever finding out more about the artist, but I always liked the strong colours and at the time was working on ‘O’ level screenprints and lino cuts using a similar linear style.

There are many images of his work on the Tate website and it took me over an hour to browse through them in order to get a feel for his work. I particularly liked the breathtaking simplicity of Bathroom mirror (1968) .

Many of his pieces are screenprints, and the same image or element may be used in several ways and with different colour choices, but a large body of these are characterised by bold outlines and flat, saturated colour.

Later in his work he combined the strong linear graphic with areas of photorealism, as in After Lunch (1975) .

In certain works he breaks the tonal areas down to a minimum, typically using black, white and a third colour, and these are best seen in his series known as the “White Ware” prints (1990) of which all eight images are listed below. The links go to the Tate website images.

Large White Jug

Lamp and Kuan Ware 

Lung Chu'an Ware and Window 

Chu'an Ware and Black Lamp 

Lamp and Lung Chu'an Ware 

Arita Flask 

Arita Flask - Black 

Sue Ware Jar 

The strong contrast of tone is carefully balanced into positive and negative areas, with the focus being on the white areas describing the vase and the light source. The odd one out here is Large White Jug, as the backlit shape appears solid white with only the shadow thrown by the handle to describe it.

EXERCISE IN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SPACE IN THE STYLE OF CAULFIELD

My brief is to produce a drawing in a similar style, and as the need to define clear tonal areas calls for a drawing with plenty of contrast, I’ve selected a still life study I did some months ago to develop.

The first process was to define the shape of the light and dark areas and to decide what elements to include. I opted to use the jug and pot and leave out the china mug which seemed a bit too clean lined for inclusion. I used the marks on the background (pentimenta from old masking tape under the paper) to suggest a door which helped break up the large area of negative space in the background.

I started by making a line drawing of the basic shapes through tracing paper from the original- it helped me to see the likely dividing lines between tones more easily. After I had familiarised myself with the shapes I moved on to developing a series of thumbnails in my sketchbook, using 4B and 9B pencils to give two distinct tones. The 9B has caused some light-bounce in the photograph.

Of the second two studies, I first completed a negative version to compare the relative balance of tones. I’ve learned to do this when painting- a quick black and white photograph can highlight areas with insufficient contrast and can easily be flipped into negative for an alternate view.

My first tonal sketch seemed to have too much white so I reworked it and made the table a mid-tone as well. While I was working on these I realised how dependent the image was on complete accuracy of tonal shape in order to make it readable, as I had now lost most of the linear information from the drawing. Details such as the lip of the jug and a tiny curl of light around the base became crucial to get right.

Finally I did two more versions, one in marker pen and a colour version in sepia and sanguine Indian ink. The inks bled slightly on the cartridge paper so they are not as crisp as I would like, I will have to repeat the exercise on marker pad for a clean finish.

I was rather surprised that I succeeded in producing an end drawing from this project as I was more drawn to Caulfield’s earlier linear style and could immediately see applications for it from sketches I have in development. The White Ware series was in complete contrast and I took a long time to find a way in- I’ve been working periodically on this project for nearly a month, and up to last week was still reading other student blogs to see how they had approached it.

It’s been interesting to focus on the extreme contrast of tone. The White Ware prints tend to have two relatively dark tones and the contrast of the white areas gives them a very intimate focus. Their elegant simplicity has echoes of Yin and Yang and complements the subject matter- seven of the series are titled for the Chinese pottery which is their focal point.

(10th Aug) I've now completed a final version of the still life, in marker pen. I chose a slate purple colour to echo the desaturated reds and browns which Caulfield often uses in his backgrounds as I didn't have a suitable brown.

Time to put Caulfield to bed for the time being and progress to the next exercise, although I'll be using what I have discovered in other work of his to develop other pieces.