Forward - with a buzz

I have just finished reading this book, received as a Christmas present.  It has filled my head with pleasure, questions, excitement, thoughts, ... a general buzz.  Whether one agrees with Hockney's ideas and opinions or not, he is always thought-provoking about how we see, how we look, how he represents what we expect to see in paintings and drawings, using photography, through theatre design, using i-phone and i-pad, and even now in moving images.  His enthusiasms have always swept me along - I just love his positive approach to everything.
I really look forward to seeing the upcoming exhibition of his recent work, and in the meantime I shall try to make the most of my shot-from-the-cannon-of-enthusiasm mood!  Perhaps you feel like downloading a free fresh flower drawing by Hockney from the Royal Ontario Museum (the exhibition is only on until tomorrow).

I hope that 2012 brings us all creative challenges, expanding enthusiasms, intriguing investigations, at least one outrageous opportunity, and lots of time for serious silence.

Happy Hogmanay!

A quick glance over my shoulder, before moving forward

Just as we are about to turn the page into a new year I like to look back over the 12 months I'm leaving - to prepare myself for the new journey if nothing else.  I like to summarise as much as possible, so that some element of this year can serve as a starting point if necessary for my thoughts in the immediate future.  I am very much looking forward to thinking, looking, experimenting afresh in 2012; building on experience rather than repeating it, and I want to take a useful nugget from this year into next.
Two exhibitions remain at the forefront of my memory - above the others which also provided much nourishing input - and those are the Basketry exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts which I saw in April, and the Bite-Size exhibition of miniature textiles which I saw more recently (and wrote about here, here, here, and here).  As ever, it was a conjunction of memories from these two with other small elements which suddenly came together to form a coherent area for further thought.
I had seen a fascinating exhibition of paintings and prints by Jaakko Mattila: Lowest Common Denominator.  The paintings have a meticulous look from the front, but I was surprised to see that the edges of the canvas had been left, so that indeed the viewer was very much aware that it was a canvas that one was looking at.  This was a kind of shock as it is not what one thinks of when first encountering the work - and certainly not seen on Mattila's website.  That niggle stayed out of sight in my brain, just waiting to find its companion thoughts.
I had signed up for a short afternoon seminar at the end of November on Writing about Craft at the Craft Study Centre.  It was there that things clicked.  I came away from the seminar with the idea that the main, perhaps the only difference between writing about craft and writing about art is the subject of materiality.  I had argued with another participant that when one looks at a Rothko one does not think about the canvas he used.  But then driving home I remembered that niggle - that looking at Mattila's canvases did deepen and widen my thoughts about his paintings.  I did think about the materiality of his work.
Then that took me back to my thinking about Edmund de Waal's vitrines of ceramics.  Looking at a ceramic object brings to mind the feel of it - its material.  Looking at a combined display of chosen ceramic objects brings to mind not only the feel of the material, but also opens all sorts of other associations.  Looking at the ceramics through a glass, or even a glass darkly in some cases, somehow begins to deprive us of its materiality as initial impact.  We are now looking at sculpture where idea and materiality combine to make their impact and indeed de Waal had a piece: Untitled, 2011 in this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (scroll down the link to see a pic.) which was firmly in the category wall sculpture.  But the materiality is still a vital ingredient - one still needs to have that genuine touch/thought response.

Edmund de Waal: Reading at Night 1/3, 2011 (A series of 3 sprayed black aluminium cabinets each containing thrown porcelain vessels in varying glazes and covered with opaque glass.)

I am not making a point about the difference between art and craft (in the main I find that a waste of time); but am interested in exploring my own work and where my thoughts, ideas, and designs will go from now.  I have been treading water for quite a while now, and tentative paddling has started me in one direction trying out designs (like the one at the top of this post) which I like so far, ... but which do not fit comfortably into a previously used category of stitching.

Ambivalent attraction

Edward Burra: The Cabbage Harvest watercolour on paper 1943-5

This is one of my favourite paintings from the current Edward Burra exhibition on at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex.  Burra is another of those artists whose work I have known since I was young.  Some pieces I have been attracted to, but others have left me cold.  Always, however, I was struck by his clear - piercing, even - un-hypocritical gaze and his draftsmanship.

I don't remember where I first encountered the paintings - perhaps they were already in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.  A hazy memory of where, when, and how, but a definite combined memory of like and dislike remained until I recently came across his glorious large painting of Northumbrian countryside in the Tate Watercolour exhibition, and also reacquainted myself with The Snack Bar in Tate Britain.

Edward Burra: Valley and River, Northumberland watercolour 1972

Edward Burra: The Snack Bar oil on canvas, 1930

I cannot remember at what point Jane Stevenson's biography came to my attention, but seeing that Pallant House were about to have a decent exhibition of his work jogged my elbow, and I am currently reading Edward Burra: Twentieth Century Eye.  How appropriate that description!  He does cover so much of what was going on, especially from the 20s and 30s onwards. He was sharp and witty, a curious and detailed observer who just loved to comment - not only in paint, as I have discovered from reading so many extracts from his letters.

The gallery has put together an excellent collection of reviews which describe Burra's work and the exhibition far better than I could.  I still have an ambivalent attraction to the work, but it is so much more informed, and I still have my memory of the paintings, and the second half of an excellent biography to read, and so much to think about.

Edward Burra: Blue Robed Figure under a tree watercolour 1937

A view across the spiral

Victor Pasmore: The quiet river:the Thames at Chiswick

  1943-4

I love this painting, and have had a postcard for many years.  I suspect that I bought it on my first visit to the Tate Gallery in the late 60s.  Victor Pasmore is an artist whose work entranced me all those years ago.  I was attracted both by the early figurative work, and by the abstract paintings.  The power of his compositions combined with a kind of quiet poetic appeal which somehow can also be found in his sculptural work.  I even found, and find it in the Apollo Pavillion - no matter that it spent so long decorated with graffiti! 

I was delighted when I found that one of my favourite venues was to have an exhibition of Victor Pasmore's work.  I have a view of one's progress through life as a kind of up a spiral - rather like walking up Frank Lloyd Wright's Manhattan Guggenheim - so that we can look back across in memory at various events and influences.  I also think that I believe that our taste during our formative years stay on as something special, and if not disturbed by subsequent more informed or experienced scrutiny, remaining as core influence.

So, it is always with a kind of nervous anticipation that I go to exhibitions of work by those early artistic 'crushes' of mine.  But I need not have worried.  I knew that the late spray paint works would still be as powerful for me because I have encountered them over the years - too rarely for my liking.

Victor Pasmore: Untitled, 1992

In the Artist's House gallery at Roche Court (open by appointment) there are also prints, which with my newly acquired specific interest in printmaking I was eager to see.

Victor Pasmore: Points of Contact, Transformations No.1,  Edition 5 of 60

I was particularly apprehensive about seeing the three dimensional work and the work on plywood because such pieces do not always age well.  Plastics used in the last century have not always worn well.  And the materiality too often then - for me, at least - gets in the way of full appreciation.  These are occasions when I would deploy a magic wish: the desire to know how the work would appear at the time of making.

Well, once more I was delighted.  Indeed given my recent more sideways-directed thoughts on three dimensional wall-mounted work, the pieces were inspirational.

Victor Pasmore: Abstract in White, Black and Maroon,  1962

And if this were not more than enough to keep the creative juices bubbling; on our way out of the Artist's House gallery we met Laura Ellen Bacon busy up a ladder weaving part of her upcoming exhibition.  We were so wowed by her fabulous work Growth Tip at the Sainsbury Centre basketry exhibition in Spring this year.  Already there is so much to look forward to in 2012.

Catching up with my reading

Alexander Deyneka - Woman Reading

Over the last couple of years I have amassed a pile of books to read - a pile even greater than normal due to my not being able to concentrate while my mother was ill.  Recently I have devoured so many whodunits and similar escapist writings.  Crime and detective stories are not only quick transport to mysterious closed circumstances: a dangerous box in which one can be a safe observer, but they are so often really well written, and can also whisk the reader off to different places and times.

My favourite authors for blocking out my everyday, and whose latest titles have been neatly stacking up on my recently acquired Kindle include Val McDermid (The Retribution) who takes me into fascinatingly sick minds - although I'm afraid that I did guess the denouement of this one, but that could possibly be a result of the sickness of my thinking at the time!  Ian Rankin (The Impossible Dead) just does not write quickly enough for me.  I also love going back to Edinburgh with him, as I do with Kate Atkinson (Started Early, Took My Dog).

I recently discovered the books of Camilla Lackberg, set in Fjallbacha, Sweden, and have been working my way through them.  The last one I read was The Gallows Bird, which is the fourth in her series about detective Patrick Hedstrom.  I very much enjoy the small community interaction which she captures, as well as the consequences of the claustrophobia which can arise.  She has filled the gap I've felt waiting for the next Karin Fossum to drop in price a bit (The Caller).  It is the examination of family history and the unravelling of motive which I very much appreciate in both of these Scandanavian authors.

From the extreme cool of one hemisphere to the heat of another, I was recently introduced by a friend to the writing of Deon Meyer, a South African who writes in Afrikaans, and so again I am benefiting from the underrated skills of excellent translation.  I read Dead Before Dying, and Blood Safari, and thoroughly enjoyed the adventures.

Another introduction, this time through a review in the Guardian newspaper, was The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton.  This is mystery, but turned somewhat on its head - perhaps describing it as a psychological thriller would be more accurate.  A different angle is also taken by Belinda Bauer whose Darkside I recently read.  It was by reading a review in the Guardian again that I found her brilliant Blacklands.  I must say that I preferred the latter, although Darkside is good too.

And it was because of the translator mentioned in the Guardian review of Death in August by Marco Vichi.  Stephen Sartarelli, a poet with a lovely feel for idiom, also translates the detective novels of Andrea Camilleri (whose The Potter's Field I am anticipating with impatience).  Death in August is a more gentle crime novel set in 1960s' Florence.  The drawing of the characters are more of the attraction than the intricacy of the crime - but all is enjoyable.

For the history I love reading the novels of Jason Goodwin.  An Evil Eye is the fourth set in Ottoman Istambul, with an Eunuch as the detective.  Istambul is a great attraction to me, in present day as well as in history, and I always eagerly await the Inspector Ikmen novels of Barbara Nadel - the latest is A Noble Killing.

I read good reviews of Ruth Rendell's The Vault, which follows on from a novel she wrote years ago under her pen name Barbara Vine: A Sight for Sore Eyes.  I had read the latter, but a long time since, and so I read both together.  I enjoyed the Vine again, but was rather disappointed with the new novel.  I have been going off Ruth Rendell recently, and I suspect that this is the last of her current work that I'll read.  Past Barbara Vine titles, however, are usually worth reading as psychological thrillers.

And then for something completely different: PD James' Death Comes to Pemberley.  This is a 'sequel' to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and although it involves a mysterious murder is not exactly a murder mystery, nor a detective story.  It was fun to read, although occasionally questioning whether certain expressions really were used at the time - they probably were; I'm constantly surprised.

Henri Lebasque: Woman reading

Now I have so much time to myself - I still cannot believe it - my determination is to make a start on that ever increasing pile of books-which-need-concentration, and books which deserve chunks of time.  First is The Grid Book by Hannah B. Higgins, a fascinating examination of how a grid was and is used in town planning, music, art, ... it is divertingly informative and thought-provoking.

Also I'm progressing through the biography of painter Edward Burra, written by Jane Stevenson.  I was attracted to this for two reasons, and now a third.  First, I have always admired a lot and disliked some of the work of Edward Burra, and have been curious about him for a long long time.  Second, I very much enjoyed a book of short stories: Good Women by Jane Stevenson, and now third, there is a retrospective exhibition of Burra's work which I intend to see soon.

Waiting at the top of the pile, next, is Katharine Harmon's You are here:Personal geographies and other maps of the imagination.

By, with, from, and in landscape

Lotte Glob: Books of the Land - Solidified Thoughts ceramic, 2004, 45 x 42cm

Yesterday we had to go to Winchester for boring administrative reasons, and I looked to see if there was anything else which might make the journey more worthwhile.  I found an exhibition of sculpture on at the gallery of the Winchester Discovery Centre (what libraries are called these days) - it sounded interesting.  I had been meaning to go for some time in order to see the Alice Kettle commission, so, several birds for one stone!
The Figure in the Landscape exhibition is brilliant: small, but perfectly formed.  It has that balance which one wants in all exhibitions: familiar stuff one loves, new (to the viewer) and astonishing/inspirational work, and work which makes one think.

Henry Moore: Reclining Figure: Hand bronze, 1979, 221cm length, Hamburg

The familiar was represented by an 86.3cm bronze working model for the above sculpture, work by Peter Randall-Page, both carved stone and ceramic on the wall, and a piece by Barbara Hepworth who inspired this exhibition.  Rachel Bebb of The Garden Gallery curated this show, and wrote the accompanying catalogue (£2 from the Discovery Centre).  In her introduction she says that 'Barbara Hepworth came to view landscape as a document of layers of human existence, and the menhirs and megaliths of Cornwall, where she lived and worked as a metaphor for individuals in society, communicating silently between past and present cultures.

... Barbara Hepworth wrote ... "To me a basic purpose of sculpture is to express the importance of man and his fundamental unity with nature."'

Barbara Hepworth: Two figures (Menhirs), Cornish slate, 1964, 82.5 x 63.8 x 32cm, Tate Gallery

Moores and Hepworths are much loved by both myself and my husband, and we never tire of seeing examples of their work.  Just these two pieces alone would have been worth the journey.  But added to them we were entranced by the works of two artists new to us: Keith Rand and Emily Young. 

Emily Young's Maremma Warrior II creates the stunning image on the cover of the catalogue.  Partly out of its block of quartzite the head seems timeless, frozen from an earlier age, an ancient warrior or leader still powerful even in sleep: a man of myth. There is a great strength in the stone captured and also released by the carving of the features.  On the other hand the work in carved wood by Keith Rand reminded me of folded paper: the delicacy and yet strength too that that has.

 

Keith Rand: Parsonage Down I bleached limewood, 2005, 108 x 19.5 x19cm and

Parsonage Down II, bleached limewood, rust, boxwood, 2005, 86 x 22 x 16cms 

I have read articles previously about Lotte Glob, and her house, and sometimes longed to be living far away from it all in the empty harsh beauty which is Sutherland in Scotland.  Although I have seen images of her ceramics I had until yesterday never seen any for real.  Well, her Books of the Land: Solidified Thoughts, seen at the top of this post is magnificent.  It is as if the knowledge of the ancients has become the land itself.

On the thought-provoking side, one artist new to me has me thinking again about the importance of distilling all the disparate input into an economical elegance, which like consommé is clarity itself while filled with a depth of taste and traces of all the ingredients.  Tim Harrisson has two sculptures in the exhibition, one carved out of Carrara marble given to him by the Barbara Hepworth Estate; but it is his three Drawings for a Geological Room which intrigued me more.

Tim Harrisson: Drawings for a Geological Room, Black, charcoal on paper, 2010, 100 x 72cm

White, ink and chalk on paper

Grey, ink and charcoal on paper

I really like these meditative scribbles which remind me of stone floors which contain fossils etc.  In going to his website later I found prints which also intrigue me, and have started me thinking about possibilities for my own printmaking.

There were other works in the exhibition, by other artists, intriguing also, but these which I've mentioned attracted me most.  My mind was so occupied by my thoughts about the work in the Figure in the Landscape exhibition that I could not at all concentrate on another reasonably substantial exhibition of textile work in another gallery in the Discovery Centre.  We buzzed round that, and I'm pleased to say that people were buying quite a lot - there were red dots everywhere and the turnover of stock was quite high for some makers.  This show is by the Force 8 group of textile artists.

The sea, the sea, ....

My first years were spent near the sea: both in Aberdeen, a fishing city on the NE coast of Scotland, and Thessaloniki, an historic international trading post on the NE coast of Greece.  My cousin in the latter location still has an apartment overlooking the wide harbour, and from her balcony I have spent many an hour being soothed by the view.

I used to love swimming in the sea at idyllic locations like the one below down the coast from Salonica. 

But the sights of the sea which inspire me the most are of ordinary work-a-day life: people in conjunction with the sea.  The fishermen - even if they are not professional:

either in Salonica, or in Southwold, Suffolk -

but I must admit I derive the greatest joy and satisfaction from watching work in and around the sea and deriving a living from and with the sea, and seeing the whole world of activity, architecture, vehicles, engineering, and even detritus of that work.

At the end of last month I had completed most of the paper work associated with my mother's death, and we decided to take off a few days.  I wanted to see the sea, and so we decided to explore a stretch of coast new to us both.  We visited the southern tip of the Thames estuary, and travelled down from the Isle of Sheppey, stopping to look at Queenborough and Sheerness, and then on to Whitstable, Herne Bay, Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate, and then on the way home a few days later we visited Dungeness.  Each of these individual places, most of which almost run into each other, has its own distinct character and function.  The trip was successful in that it provided a much needed break, it gave us unexpected delights, and provided inspiration towards a positive outlook.  It was deeply satisfying.

Here are a few of my snaps: Queenborough on Sheppey

From Whitstable which is a popular tourist town, and was still buzzing on the Sunday, but quietened down nicely for us during the week.  We enjoyed the restaurant Samphire so much that we ate there two evenings in a row.

Some folks live precariously right on the beach and risk high tides, and it is possible to stay in former fisherman's huts converted to hotel rooms.

Whitstable is famous for its oysters.  Neither of us has had a great love of the beastie in its raw state - which is perhaps just as well! - despite otherwise liking cooked seafood.  They recycle the shells to good effect here as well in the USA.

Margate now has a stunning new gallery on the shore just by the harbour: the Turner Contemporary.  We were interested to find a thought-provoking exhibition on about youth, which contained quite an eclectic collection of work about youth or by young artists.

The tide was coming in when we went for our walk along the coast, and I was fascinated by how the waves can move in seemingly opposite directions at the same time. Although I don't think I've quite been able to capture it in this photo.

Broadstairs felt very historic to me.  And I could imagine some Victorian, or earlier folk bustling about its streets and looking anxiously out of their windows at the sea.

Dungeness however felt completely other-worldly.  It is a shingle spit with a bleak aspect, containing small fishermen's huts, some occupied, and some ruined.  It is a conservation area, there is a power station, there is wild noise from the wind (and we had a quick hailstorm).  The late film maker and painter Derek Jarman's house and famous garden is there, and there is another traditional black house/hut which is architect designed and clad in rubber - although it fits right in with everything else.  It is not an alien land as such - really I felt that we were the aliens who had landed.  I could not live there, but I just love the look of it.

Sometimes ....

on setting out to achieve one task, ... I get sidelined ....
Of course I blame the fact that I had to pop out this morning to buy some essentials, and that that diverted me off my intended course of continuing to clear / tidy / sort my sewing room/studio.  Yesterday I achieved a lot of clearing and cleaning, moving a mountain of accumulated paper, projects, materials, and once-seen-as-useful-or-potentially-useful-junk.  I was not only pleased with my achievement, but I had also discovered some work which I'd completely forgotten.  Indeed I quite like what I found and set about scanning it.
Anyway, after I returned from my successful shopping expedition there was not really enough time before lunch to pull up my sleeves and resume my Augean task, so I sat down to potter about with a couple of the pastel drawings I'd scanned.  Well, in this case one pastel drawing and one stencil/mask I'd cut out and used with pastel.

The experiment with Unison soft pastels - I love them for their silky soft crumble.

This had been used and the pastel residue makes interesting marks on the card.

It needed the bite of black, and a few tweaks around, all done with Corel Painter 11, my usual toolbox, and this work-in-progress has got me excited.  I don't think that it is something that could stand being very big, so I shall probably print it on some A3 prepared cotton to be stitched.  Not too bad for a displacement activity!