On now
A Rare Collection of Oil Sketches by Lucy Kemp-Welch
Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch RI ROI RBA
1st February to 18th February 2012
9 Cork Street
Lucy Kemp-Welch
£6.00
Catalogue size is 210 x 210mm; 16 pages plus cover 15 works illustrated Foreword by Andrea Gates
Foreword
This collection of never before exhibited oil sketches by the master equine painter Lucy Kemp-Welch date from around 1908, and were originally in the collection of a West Country family...
This collection of never before exhibited oil sketches by the master equine painter Lucy Kemp-Welch date from around 1908, and were originally in the collection of a West Country family. Immediate and vibrant, they were doubtless painted directly in the field, which was how the artist preferred to capture her animal subjects. These sketches beautifully illustrate the inherent empathy that Lucy felt her entire career for working animals, most particularly horses.
East Coast Influences
1st February to 18th February 2012
8 Cork Street
East Coast Influences
£13.00
Catalogue size is 285 x 240mm (Portrait) 80 pages plus cover 94 works illustrated Foreword by Ian Collins Author of various books, including: Water Marks: Art in East Anglia Bird on a Wire - The Life and Art of Guy Taplin John Craxton James Dodds: Tide Lines
Foreword
Selected works by East Anglian artists: Richard Bawden, Jason Bowyer, William Bowyer, Lionel Bulmer, Simon Carter, James Dodds, Laurence Edwards, Robina Jack, Mary Newcomb, Tessa Newcomb, Guy Taplin, Nancy Rose Taplin...
Selected works by East Anglian artists: Richard Bawden, Jason Bowyer, William Bowyer, Lionel Bulmer, Simon Carter, James Dodds, Laurence Edwards, Robina Jack, Mary Newcomb, Tessa Newcomb, Guy Taplin, Nancy Rose Taplin.
Down the ages East Anglia has seemed at one and the same time a creative hub and a place apart, if not on the edge of everything. With an eroding coastline and earthy borders which blur in marsh and fen where not in riverbank, our most easterly region is dogged by shifting definition. Norfolk and Suffolk are certainly in, but affinity is claimed with swathes of northern Essex, eastern Cambridgeshire and even southern Lincolnshire. East Anglia? We all know it when we see it. And there is something in the air and in the soil which lends an eerie sense that everything is linking up here.
Works on Paper 2012
22nd February to 10th March 2012
9 Cork Street
20th Century Works on Paper
£13.00
Catalogue size is 285 x 240 mm (portrait); 64 pages plus cover 130 works illustrated Foreword by DM
Foreword
All figurative artists try to translate the visual world into something beyond the simple material fact of what anyone with eyes can see. The best of them capture something new about what we only thought we knew...
All figurative artists try to translate the visual world into something beyond the simple material fact of what anyone with eyes can see. The best of them capture something new about what we only thought we knew. And it is their drawings or sketches that can often manifest a sense of 'eureka!' in a way their socalled finished works cannot.
The works on paper in this exhibition were made in a variety of media - ink, crayon, watercolour, oils, etc. - but all of the artists behind them took at least part of their inspiration from a sense of freedom, expression, or spontaneity. Forster's starry skies and floral kaleidoscopes were informed by his interest in Surrealism and the subconscious, while a sense of the metaphysical suffuses Brian Horton's ethereal landscapes. Rose Hilton's delight in colour and exuberant line make her nudes appear to almost spring off the paper, just as colour and line beat like a jazz combo in both the works of Eardley Knollys and Edward Piper. Similarly, Nancy Haig transformed often forbiddingly rugged landscapes though her use of fluid washes and squiggly lines of India ink. By focusing on a bird's inherent movement, rather than its physical details, Bridget McCrum turns her
subject matter into a veritable metaphor for freedom. Likewise, when Luke Piper choses a vista for one of his multi-layered landscapes, he is drawn less by the actual view than by whatever literally illuminates it, if only fleetingly. Michael Upton's meticulously toned views illustrate a fascination with change he explored in his more extemporaneous conceptual work, just as Peter Prendergast's primeval Welsh landscapes were influenced by his earlier interest in Abstract Expressionism.
These artists' works on paper may be more affordable than their paintings or sculptures, but they are in no way secondary to them; in fact, on the contrary, they're primary. They are often the more immediate expression of their creativity and in many ways, can appear to be a personal communication between the artist and the viewer. I think with a canvas or sculpture we are often obliged to share the audience, but if we are lucky, a work on paper can appear to speak to us alone.
David Messum
Peter Brown 2012
Peter Brown ROI PS NEAC
22nd February to 10th March 2012
8 Cork Street
Browns Oil Sketches
£16.50
Catalogue size is 285 x 240 mm (landscape); 96 pages plus cover 113 works illustrated Foreword by DM
Foreword
Artists have studios for several reasons, both practical and otherwise. But I think many, if asked, would volunteer that their studio gives them a creative locus, a sanctuary where they can take refuge, be it from the weather or unwelcome interruption...
Artists have studios for several reasons, both practical and otherwise. But I think many, if asked, would volunteer that their studio gives them a creative locus, a sanctuary where they can take refuge, be it from the weather or unwelcome interruption. Peter Brown also has a studio, where he stores his materials and work, both his finished canvases, and those he consigns to his formidable 'do-over' pile. But he rarely uses it to actually work. Instead, Pete's always preferred to paint literally on the road, and out in the field. He says that it's only when the place, the light, the people and his brush upon the canvas all fall into sync that he truly feels alive, as a painter should be.
It's probably in this respect that Pete's work often reminds me of the oil sketches of John Constable; their working method and approach to subject matter is very similar. Firstly, Pete shares Constable's innate love for those everyday details of the world around us that often evade us empirically, even when they're invading our senses. Equally, like Constable, Pete fundamentally needs to make onthespot studies, not only to capture the natural effects of light and time on a specific place, but also because the actual making of them refreshes and invigorates him as a painter, even if sometimes, he decides in the end to bin them. 'The world is wide, no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other. Constable wrote that in the 1830s, but throw in an expletive or two and it could be something Pete said last week.
In the past Messum's have presented several solo shows featuring Pete's various series capturing views of Bath, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford, and, of course, London. But whether his subject is urban or rural, field or coast, Pete almost always includes the human element. He is at heart a chronicler of the world around him and it's tempting to draw a comparison between his work and that of William Hogarth. Except that Pete's work is probably much closer in sympathy to that of Hogarth's drinking buddy, Samuel Scott, the so-called 'British Canaletto', because the fact is, not only is Pete a remarkably astute view painter, he genuinely likes people. And like a true humanist (though he'd
probably roll his eyes at the word), Pete likes their energy, their mundaneness, their strengths and their foibles in more or less equal measure, just so long as they add to the scene, of course.
A few years ago, Pete was invited by the Savoy Hotel to be their first artist in residence, and for a whole year he was given free access to paint out of the same suite Claude Monet used to make most of his famous London views. It was a genuine honour, a nod to his exceptional talent for capturing impressions of the capital, but as Pete said at the time: "I was a little bit worried about doing a dodgy Monet rip-off. I guess I'm like an English Impressionist but my painting is not like Monet's. I'm more like [Walter] Sickert." It's true that there is definitely something of Sickert in Pete's work, specifically, as John Russell Taylor noted, Sickert's taste for the sheer variety of human activity and how it can inform our experience of a time and place. But what Pete doesn't share with Sickert is his prejudice against 'the tyranny of nature'. And Pete's obvious enthusiasm for connecting with the time, place and people in the views he choses for his 'sittings', also distinguishes his work from Sickert's Camden Town masterpieces, which so often convey a sense of failed communication and regret.
Most of these recent paintings are of sites throughout the southwest of England, including parts of West Sussex, North Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall, but several also capture views of central London, including aspects that range from the glamour of Bond Street to the aftermath of the August riots in Tottenham. Pete produced these pictures over the better part of a year, all the while making notes of his working methods, the challenges and pitfalls of working en plein-air, his routes, and routines, his family life, and his various encounters with people throughout. In the course of putting together this exhibition, it seemed obvious that we should incorporate Pete's 'diary' into the catalogue. Not only do the combined images of Pete's work and his working notes often read like a hilarious twist between Samuel Pepys and Jerome K. Jerome, but it can also give us a sense of being right there on the site with Pete while he was painting, looking over his shoulder, or even imagining ourselves on the street, hoping he'll paint us in.
David Messum
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