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Marigolds and Poppies Painting
All my recent trips looking at art inspired me to paint A Picture.
That, combined with all the homegrown garden flowers I've got like these amazing Chiffon Californian Poppies and a new pot from Bruges to put them in. It feels like a long time since I've wanted to Make Art and it feels good to have broken through again.
8 pieces of impact
In order not to gorge on visual inspiration without digesting it, I have recently begun a new practice. I look at the photos I've taken and ask myself why? Why did this make an impact? What impact? And then either jot it in a sketchbook or print & pin it to the studio wall.
So here are the 8 artists who impacted me from the recent RA Summer Show 2023 and why:
No 757
The colours spoke to me! I am really enjoying using neon and fluro colours at the moment myself so Philip Suttons work caught my eye instantly. I also love how pattern orientated his approach is. And also that halo of blue around the flowers where he's painted up to it afterwards - it kind of glows.
Adrian Davies
Adrian Davies Between the Cracks
Can't find a single thing out about this guy. So its just one piece of work to study for now but what a piece. Unfortunately my photo of the whole picture is blurred but you can see the level of detail from these 2 close-ups. What fantastic use of tone, a solid black background, gouache paint (my fave) and layering.
Caroline used to be a pattern designer which explains her eye for & gorgeous use of colour. These pieces really evoke mood and emotion which really connected with me. I am also interested in the way she mixes media and translucency.
This delicious still life drew me across the room - that yellow scalloped shape, the aqua green next to that red stripe and the use of patterned paper collage paper. Some pieces of art make me just want to join in to and this was one. It conveys joy, play at work and inspired me to mix things up a bit by looking for simple shapes and complimentary colour pops.
Alexandra Blum Myddleton Square
Wow, just wow! What drawing capability. What a lovely soft graphite line. I love where its got rubbed and looks hazy and smokey. I love her use of erasing or keeping under layers of drawing light and indistinct. Her entire portfolio is jaw-dropping - check the link above.
David Brayne In Pursuit of Spring
Another piece from the show that had quiet presence. Featured on a wall grouped with other complimentary (and interesting paintings) the mood of it pulled me in; the figure looking out to me (sad, happy, ok?) and the composition of horizontal background stripes and circular yellow wheels catch the eye after the mood has caught the heart.
David Brayne - from his website
I read that he applies paint made from his own mixing of pigments, in lots of layers of textures and glazes, building up the surface - his process is considered and the art itself backs that up - there something deep going on in the narrative of them all. I'd v. much recommend a look through his website.
David Dawson A Wheel of Cloud
This guy has painted the Queen and worked for Lucien Freud. I was just inspired by the way he applies paint loosely, freely with lots of dark underpainting. It made me want to paint a landscape.
Indoor Cosmology David Remfry
I got lots from this - I like the format and composition of 16 studies of the same thing in slightly different ways in terms of viewpoint and from a limited and associated colour palette. I liked how the whole piece speaks of a scene while individual pieces are in vary states of abstraction.It reminded me of what can be achieved when you're brave enough to cut up and re-order artwork.
RA Summer Exhibition 2023
Gaze - Sarah Berman
Last week I saw the Royal Academy 2023 Summer Show and enjoyed it hugely.
I must have been in a receptive mood that day because the joy of everyone making art, such beautiful art, really touched me.
Walking through rooms beautifully prepared to colour harmonise with carefully curated art was just delicious.
I go to galleries a lot but this quenched a thirst I didn't realise I had and I think it's because (to some degree) the Summer Show is an Everyman show; a chance for the unsung and unseen to have a moment in the spotlight and that's inspiring in itself.
But also because there was such a breadth of styles, approaches and use of media - it was like a buffet table of goodies to pick at and devour.
I got such a lot of composition, colour and style notes from looking at all these pieces.
Ann Oram All Things Are Connected
The people who select works for the rooms in the show do a superb job of finding connections through colour, mood or subject matter.
The sum total of the whole grouping of pieces becomes an art form in itself.
And I love to find some unwitting person who colour co-ordinates with a wall!
Good Vibrations - Annie Folkard
It isn't all painting or print - there's textile art, sculpture and architecture too.
If Only He Could talk - Christina MacDonald
I love mini scenery (model villages, railway sets etc) so I really enjoyed the architectural building mock-ups.
In one way its almost over whelming that there is so much art being made and in another it felt like a invisible club made visible for a time - all these people making their way through life making art as the result of some deep need to create.
Paul Dash- Bacchanal
I love discovering new to me / contemporary artists and its really my main motivation in using social media (Instagram in particular) because my feeds are made up of the inspiring and educative.
Gregory Olympio (top) Mali Morris (below) who is showing at Icon, Birmingham till December 2023.
A show like this offers a wealth of discovery that I can 'follow' and looking and noticing aspects of another's practice has a drip-drip feed into things I try in my own art-making.
I did come home and the very next day paint a still life, something I've not done in a little while, and I call that 'proof in the pudding'!
John Maine
Next post will be about what inspired me and why. Thanks for reading x
After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art
La Danse. André Derain. 1906
This Summer I have been filling my cup and the latest drops of inspiration have come in the form of this gorgeous, wonderful, visual feast for the eyes and soul: After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art at The National Gallery.
Van Gogh Woman from Arles
I saw this film on You tube talking about the exhibition and at about 4 minutes in I knew I had to go to it, as soon as possible !
Van Gogh House in Saintes Maries de la Mer
I could see that there were artists exhibited that I had never heard of and also familiar ones but whose individual pieces I had never seen before, like these Van Gogh's (and indeed there were a lot of loans from private collectors in the show)
Van Gogh Laboureur dans un Champ
We are all probably visually familiar with the giants of Impressionism ( a group working together mostly in France, on a shared set of approaches & techniques from the early 1860's to about 1886) This exhibition brought in a wider selection of artists working across Europe after the 1880's up until the first WW.
Van Gogh Laboureur dans un Champ- detail
Post-Impressionism was a predominantly French art movement but just like I'm viewing art, being inspired and acting out ideas in my own work from things I've seen, so too were the artists of C19th who saw the work and ideas of the French groundbreakers and took it home and developed ideas, ways of seeing, ways of applying paint, subject matter and made it their own.
Bronica Koller-Pine The Artists Mother
So the show has rooms which focus on artists from Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels and Vienna - most were new to me.
Bronica Koller-Pine The Artists Mother - detail
The PI movement encompassed what we call Expressionism, Cubism and Abstraction and then into that you can also throw Neo-Impressionism and the Fauves who sort of sit between and overlap the Impressionists way of thinking and the Post Impressionists.
Paul Signac Setting Sun
The Neo-Impressionists developed a way of painting based on optical theory and applying paint in strokes of colour that blended visually by the eye as you viewed it - or Pointillism as its often referred to.
Andre Derain L'Estaque
I'm a long, long-time lover of the Fauves (Derain, Matisse, Braque, Vlaminck) for their bright use of colour and for making the enjoyment of actually creating the painting justifiable so I was over-joyed that my favourite ever piece ( Derain L'Estaque, above) was there in the actual flesh!
Paul Gauguin Nevermore
Gaugin contributed a lot of the development of modern art but we are now conscious of how his private life became public through his work and fame: he exploited women, exoticised the female nude (sadly, particularly adolescents) and was sexually exploitative while making his great art - he wasn't alone in this - but culture develops through time and we use new (and better) lenses to evaluate things. I thought the National Gallery did a fantastic job of the text next to this painting summing just that up (and actually all the 'blurbs' were very accessible) And after I'd read it and looked again at the models face, I saw it with new feeling.
Signac Bertaud's Pine
I mostly come away from exhibitions with new ideas about subject matter and compositions; sometimes also wanting to try new materials but always with notes on colour palettes for my pattern design work. I have this cute app on my phone that sums up a painting in 5 colours.
If you've been around here long you'll know why I love this one... pattern! But I was also impressed by the success of its limited colour palette too.
I normally find work by Vuillard to be dull, very sombre (and brown) and small but this was a show stopper because it is enormous and is an absolute feast of pattern and design.
Edouard Vuillard Figures in an Interior
You can see the Vermeer's, Titian's and Gainsborough's from the permanent collection as you approach this exhibition and when you view these colourful, loose,'rough' textural, flat, gestural and playful pieces of modern art in the context of what went before, you can really appreciate the ground they broke.
Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer ll
I don't recall ever seeing a Klimt portrait in real life and this piece really impressed it's unique approach. Every thing about it's size, the flattening of picture planes, the colour palette, the stylisation and the use of pattern all still speaks of the innovation that Klimt brought to our visual history. Its prompted me to get my book on him out again - it was so inspiring, I just sat and drank it in for the longest time.
Bernhard Hoetger Eve on the Lion - oak and bronze & Paula Modersohn-Becker in the background
I'm finishing by including a sculpture which is very unusual for me but this was so delicate, brilliantly lit and I want to remember it by including it here. Hope you've enjoyed my book report Â
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After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art at The National Gallery. is on until Until 13 August 2023
Bruges
We had a little 4 day trip away to Bruges (and Ghent) in Belgium.
Lots of walking around the very cute, immaculately tidy and clean mini-city.
And surprisingly only one waffle but quite a few Aperols at sun-down - how else do you get a sit down!!
We saw lots of art; the best being in Ghent (which we didn't like as a city) but loved their public art gallery which was an interesting mixture from The Renaissance through to Post Impressionism.
And if you're reading this for tips on your own trip here's the things I wished I known before hand:
There is a free shuttle bus from the station which loops around the town every 20 mins,
The station car park is the cheapest place to park a car long term,
There seemed to be a pattern of lunchtime closures, shops shutting at 6pm and then restaurants not opening till 6pm and usually shutting by 9pm (we went in June pre-season) so maybe book ahead,
The train to Ghent was £3.00 each way and really easy to use,
There are mosquitos in Belgium - come prepared!
