66 Latchmere Road, Kingston upon Thames
June 2014
The first weekend of the Open Studios went well – lovely weather and good visitor numbers. I’m sharing with three other excellent artists – Peg Morris, Ingrid Saag and Emily Limna. Our work is very different, but blends together well in this lovely setting.
Richard Hamilton Retrospective Exhibition
Tate Modern April 2014
This retrospective at Tate Modern charts the evolution of Richard Hamilton’s artistic output very thoroughly, which makes for a highly absorbing exhibition – I felt quite exhausted by the end!
I hadn’t been aware of the diversity of Hamilton’s work until seeing this exhibition – it explores his relationship to design, painting, photography and television, as well as his engagement and collaborations with other artists. I discovered that Hamilton’s art is anti-romantic. Rather than evolving a single style to express his personality, he seems to have regarded each work as a separate intellectual problem – exploring each analytically.
I particularly liked his ‘My Marilyn’ 1965 – a collage from contact prints that Marilyn herself had marked with crosses those she pictures didn’t like and which Hamilton has painted over – indicating poignantly her vulnerability and tendency for self destruction. Stronger I thought than Warhol’s Marilyn portraits, but not as eye-catching.
Here is another of the landscapes that I’ve completed recently – acrylic on paper…
I’ve been working on a series of works on paper over the last few weeks – all a combination of acrylic paint and coloured pencil. These two were inspired by the riverside in the recent wintry weather…
I was really pleased to have another of my life drawings accepted for the exhibition ‘Drawn Together’ at Richmond Riverside Gallery (in the Old Town hall). The exhibition looks really good happily, with a lovely mix of interesting art – pop in and take a look if you’re in Richmond.
Tate Modern December 2013
This extensive, biographical exhibition sets Klee’s work along side his personal life, his links to other artists and the momentous historical events that affected him and his contemporaries.
I was familiar with Klee’s work before going to this exhibition, but mainly from books and had only seen a handful of his paintings in previous exhibitions. Seeing his work en masse for the first time, the first thing that made a big impression on me was his wonderful sense of colour.
We learn from the accompanying text, that a trip to Tunisia in 1914 has a profound affect on him as an artist, he writes:
‘Colour possesses me, I don’t have to pursue it. It will possess me always. I know it. That’s the meaning of this happy hour: colour and I are one. I am a painter.’
There was so much information to absorb that I feel I should go again to just look at the paintings, but I did come away with a much better understanding of the man and the way his work developed.
I especially liked the inclusions of quotes about him by some of his contemporaries, e.g:
‘He falls in love with a leaf, a star, a butterflies wing and since the heavens and all infinity are reflected in them, he paints those in too.’ (Hugo Ball ‘Flight out of Time’ 1917).
I’ve included a couple of my favourite pieces from the exhibition:
This image is a detail from “The Walthamstow Tapestry” (2009) by Grayson Perry, a 15m by 3m work. The tapestry can be read from left to right, starting with a scene of childbirth and continuing with depictions of man’s passage through life until death.
I enjoyed listening to the Reith lectures on Radio 4 by Grayson Perry over the last few weeks. I like his pragmatic approach to the art world. In his words he explains, “In this series of lectures, I’ve tried to answer some of the fundamental obvious questions about the art world. I’ve not done this to expose the workings as some kind of trick like ripping the curtain back on The Wizard of Oz, but because I thought people might be intrigued. I did it so that people like the scarecrow and the tin man and the lion might enter the Emerald City of the art world a little smarter, a little braver, and a little fonder.”
This in particular resonated with me. In the last of the lectures, he says “But the metaphor that best describes what it’s like for me being an artist is a refuge, a place in my head where I can go on my own and process the world and it’s complexities. It’s a kind inner shed in which I can lose myself.”
All four lectures are well worth a listen, so if you didn’t get chance to hear them when broadcast search on BBC iplayer/radio4.
I really enjoyed this exhibition at The Royal Academy – very comprehensive and interesting to learn how Australian art developed from the time of the first settlers to modern times.
Highlights for me were the Australian Impressionists – especially Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts, whose work I wasn’t aware of until this exhibition. Of Sidney Nolan’s work, the surreal ‘Pretty Polly Mine’ appealed to me (see attached pic). From the 1960’s – 1980’s period I particularly liked Fred Williams abstract landscapes such as ‘Yellow Landscape’, which captured the essence of the outback.
The exhibition is on until 8th December 2013.
Arcadia Revisited Exhibition
25-27 October 2013
Orleans House, Octagon Room
Riverside, Twickenham, TW1 3DJ
For artsrichmond’s Autumn Art Exhibition this year, it is curating an exhibition of work by Local Artists on the theme of ‘Arcadia Revisited’.
As part of the 2013 Richmond upon Thames Gardens Festival, artsrichmond has been working with its partners to encourage local artists to ‘revisit’ the borough’s rich heritage of Arcadian landscapes, views and vistas. The culmination of which is the exhibition Arcadia Revisited in the Octagon Room at Orleans House Gallery from 25-27 October 2013. Private View on Friday 25 October from 6-7.30pm.
A change from landscapes to life drawing this week.
I did these sketches earlier in the month. The standing poses are five minute sketches and the sitting poses are ten minutes…..good practice!
