'Cape Cod & the Islands', 'Cape Cod', 'Nantucket'

'Cape Cod & the Islands'   60x80cms

At the midway point of my journeys around US on the Boise Travel Scholarship*, Denise came over for a couple of weeks and we drove to New England visiting Cape Cod, Nantucket and up the coast to Maine. After an aborted attempt to get a studio in New York, I took up the offer of working in the barn of sculptor Jon Isherwood in upstate New York. a great friend from Canterbury College of Art. The location was idyllic, with a view of the Catskills through the barn door. Jon and Helen were great hosts and critics too. An intense two months period of working followed, a critical period in my career. I was prolific, twenty odd paintings, including several large canvases. I worked in oils so had to return to the US a year later to build a crate around the paintings, before shipping them back to England.  My experiences in the US continued to inspire my work, becoming the 'A m e r i c a s c a p e s' series which was shown at the Woodlands Gallery, Morley Gallery and the Michael West Gallery.

'Cape Cod & the Islands' was shown at the Royal academy Summer Exhibition in 2011. Fall colours,...  boat-shaped Nantucket sails out of the painting....enjoying the range of paint, the journey from the flat wash in the top left through to the dense mass/weight of paint, colour, marks in the waters of Rhode Island. (below). Powerful in a different way is the second area of focus, the tiny pink tip of Cape Cod pulsating against the blue sea....the Atlantic shoreline is broken, water seeps into the land creating movement...

detail

Zooming in on Cape Cod in the next painting...love the colours of the water and the curved corner, echoing the shape of Cape Cod and the hook of Provincetown. The painting has an ambiguous space, the aerial viewpoint subverted by the receding scale of the boats, which help make Cape Cod almost vertical and sculptural. strangely anchored at the base.

'Cape Cod'   90x70cms

A colour-reversal in 'Nantucket': a mass of red-sea, perhaps influenced by Jon's barn where it was made. Colour and imagery are kept simple to highlight the amazing shape of the island- boat, sea-creature, moving through the water...

'Nantucket'   168x206cms

Two more favourite New England paintings from the 'Indian-Yellow' period! In 'New England', I particularly like the meandering outline of Maine against the lemon-sky (Canada). This painting has disappeared.

We never got to to Two Bush Island, I just liked the name. The painting is playful: location, image and the curious painter's space tucked behind the lighthouse. 

'New England'  60x50cms

'Two Bush Island Light, Maine'   25x35cms

* from the Slade School of Art

A m e r i c a s c a p e s: 'Lake Shore Ltd (& Jon's Barn)'

 

 

Trawling through my archive, I came across this painting, bringing back memories of my journey to the USA in 1997, after I was awarded a Boise Travel Scholarship from the Slade School of Art. I was staggered by the invention and vitality in this piece- maybe it's time to tell the tale....

 

During my stay in the US I made a series of train journeys around the country, with extended stays in Chicago, San Diego, New Orleans, New England and New York City, followed by 2 month's intense painting in a barn in upstate New York belonging to sculptor Jon Isherwood, a great friend from Canterbury College of Art.  I completed 22 paintings in the barn including three very large canvases, 'Chesapeake Bay', 'California' and 'Nantucket'.  The  'A m e r i c a s c a p e s'  series continued on my return to the UK including this painting which shows the first leg of the journey from New York to Chicago.

 

It was painted on a Formica kitchen cupboard panel retrieved from a skip - I wanted to replicate a similar surface to the bright-white Formica covered boards that I used for the smaller paintings in the barn. An impossible skiddy surface with the constant tension of whether the paint will fall off.  It's kind of dazzling how this paint messes with time, reality and space. A not very well-disguised homage to Matisse's 'The Red Studio' that I saw in New York - propped up against the barn is one of my paintings- a painting within a painting. But what makes this painting exciting is that the subject of my painting within the painting, Chesapeake Bay, is also in the painting- you can see the shape on the Atlantic coast below New York. Love the relationship between map and image - how the line of the flat shape of New York state continues into the line that defines the 3-dimensionality of the barn. Also the relationship between the paint-filled hole in the Formica and the dot of Chicago above.

 

Have I ever painted a more confident line than the drawing of the Great Lakes?

 

A couple of artist friends bought this piece, Michelle Avison & Alex le Fevre - I look forward to seeing it again when I'm next  in London.

 

Next post will be about the painting of the second leg of the journey, Chicago to San Francisco on the 'California Zephyr'. Below is 'Lake Shore Ltd' with 'Nantucket', which is also propped up against the barn in the painting!

 

 

Lake Shore Ltd & 'Nantucket' at Quay Arts

 

 

 

'Arizona - (after Don deLillo's 'Underworld)' 168x132cms

One of my  'A m e r i c a s c a p e s'  series and one of the strongest paintings of my career,  Now the children have grown up a bit, might risk putting it on the stairs....

 

In 1997, I was awarded a Boise Travel Scholarship from the Slade School of Art and made a series of train journeys around the US before painting for 2 months in a barn (belonging to sculptor Jon Isherwood) in upstate New York.  On my travels, I took a detour to the Grand Canyon where I had an incredible, sublime moment: alone on the edge of a promontory, in a jaw-dropping landscape, buzzards flying overhead, total silence.....

 

As an artist, how do you deal with that grandeur, that overwhelming visual, physical experience?  Like the 'City of Glass' series where I had problems dealing with the scale and familiarity of New York, I found my way in through a novel, this time with Don deLillo's 'Underworld'. 

 

There is a passage where the main character Nick Shay, visits an artist friend of his from New York who is making an artwork at an air base in the Arizona desert. It's not an active base, it's where the US airforce keep their decommissioned B52 bombers, rows upon rows of them, neatly parked. The artist and her team of assistants are systematically stripping the silver paint from the aircraft and then repainting them in wild, vivid colours. Of course, it's a piece that can only be seen from the air, and as a birthday treat Nick and his wife see the artwork from a hot air balloon, a fantastic passage on p:83, where through Nick's eyes you are seeing a painting, the like of which you can never have imagined.  

 

I was mesmerised by the scale and ambition and beauty of the (fictitious) artwork- in an interview, the artist talks about the desert being the frame - and it resonated with my experience at the Grand Canyon.  

 

''This is a landscape painting in which we use the landscape itself. the desert is central to his piece. It's the surround. It's the framing device. It's the four-part horizon.'' 

Artist Klara Sax, p:70, 'Underworld'

 

In the painting there is so much space and heat, the white, blank canvas of Mexico the hottest part. In the top right corner is the image of the B52's, and in the spirit of the novel, although ordered in rows, each is different, individualised, 'decommissioned' from their military identity.  There are fifty aircraft, one for each state, and if you tilt your head you can see the deliberate link to the American flag. Scratched into the paint, is a very subtle trainline, ending at the powerful dot of Flagstaff where you catch the bus to the canyon.....

 

 

Detail- B52 bombers


 

'Arizona' & 'D.C.(Diamond City)' at the Michael West Gallery

 

 

 



National Open Art Competition Private View

Ashley, Faye, Ollie & Denise by 'City Of Glass1' 

The whole family enjoyed a fabulous weekend in Chichester. Friday night we attended the Private View of The National Open Art Exhibition and were very impressed with the quality and diversity of work. Both Ashley and I loved the piece  'The Lacemaker' by Joy Wolfenden-Brown, a very worthy winner of The Towry Award for Best Work in 2012 . The show is on until 21st October and then transfers to The Prince's Foundation Gallery in  Hoxton, London 24 October - 1st November. There were over 2,000 entries this year and the judges selected around 95 pieces for the show. So well done to all the artists that made it, in the exhibition.

Ashley has been invited along to BBC Radio Cornwall, Tuesday 16th October at 3.30 to talk about his work and the exhibition, so tune in if you would like hear  more about his thoughts behind his paintings and his painting process.

Neil Lawson Baker of the NOAC with the opening speech

Faye & 'The Lacemaker' -top painting!

Jon Isherwood's 'Singer of Tales'

Our cultural weekend continued when we went to the Cass Sculpture Foundation park in Goodwood. It was magical seeing so many different forms of sculpture by so many artists all in one location. The landscape really worked the pieces with the weather elements adding another dimension to the work. Ashley particularly enjoyed seeing some of his friends work, Jon Isherwood and Diane Maclean. Ashley painted most of his 'Americascape' series in Jon's barn while he was in the US on his Boise Travel Scholarship from the Slade. The children even enjoyed themselves- it was a very different walk in the park!

Diane Maclean's 'Encampment'

Julian Wild's 'System No 19'