Collage

At the Light Box in Woking, one of the few contemporary art galleries in Surrey. They had two small exhibitions about collage. The Persistence of Collage looked at how British artists had used the technique over the 20th century. Like the proverbial curate's egg, it was good and bad. Starting with Ben Nicholson and going on from there. At times, it veered between paintings that were inspired from original collages. Eduardo Paolozzi is always good value within his vivid industrial patterns.

It was a good taster for the exhibition in another part of the gallery, by Joanne Hummel Newell. Her use of collages reminded me of the early Hockney pieces with the naive use of colour and mark marking. Chance encounters that are provoking and frustrating, in some ways why art should be. This was a little gem of a show,  I will be looking out for more exhibition by her in the future.

A Bigger Picture - David Hockney at the Royal Academy

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear. I had tried to got to this exhibition without feeling negative towards it, but is now 8 hours since wandering around and I am still very unimpressed with the results by David Hockney.  There are some good bits, but mainly most of them would not be here without a 'name' to go with them.

The idea of Thixendale wood pictures at the start of the exhibition, having the same viewpoint taken from each season. Good idea, but the execution looked to naive. The early landscape before going to California was interesting. The Flight to Italy was a geographic map with a car travelling over them, with driver and passenger. I like this. Some of the Grand Canyon images and photographs were not bad and Mulholland Drive was engaging. Then I discovered it was a photographic replica and the original was still in California.

The next room of the beginning of these landscape were OK, from 1997, great shapes, bold colour, but lacking something. Perhaps it was the use of colour from his California pictures that gave them, a more expressive feel that the later pieces. I didn't like the water colours as they just felt very amateurish and the tunnel motif is some thing I had done earlier. So it was not revelatory as the exhibition notes suggested.

What did impressive me, where the charcoal drawings that were large clumps of trees in one almost solid block, but the trees were carved out. These seem to retain not only a great shape, but expressionless of the landscape. Adding colour seem to distort the viewer perception of the place, was it a landscape or just shapes of colour?

The Hawthorn series was fascinating as this was a theme that Stanley Spencer had tackled and much better than Hockney. Some of the pictures looked like things out of H P Lovecraft, perhaps I liked them for that only.

Again found that he had used the day by day motif that I am using in drawing diary of a painting a day. So you will not feel short changed by the lack of images as the galleries were packed wall to wall.

In a separate room was some film world a series of split screen that did not necessary match up to the the surrounding part of the grid. Intriguing? Yes, but great art, no. Similarly, Hockney had re-worked various images of Claude Lorraine's painting of the Sermon on the Mount, almost juvenile.

I liked the large ipad sketches, but I had my suspicions that because of their size, they dominated you as a viewer and you would think they were good. On the other hand, they were more subtle than the painting, possibly because they were more direct and immediate rather than worked upon and re-worked.  

And to think I was worried that Hockney was going to appear in a similar light to Graham Sutherland (after the barrage of criticism from the recent exhibition at the Tate Britain). Even his companion Royal Academician, Barbara Rae is way ahead of him. She engages you with the landscape and her work. I am still not impressed with these Hockney landscapes, on the other hand it was packed out with viewers, so what do I know?

An Unfinished World

This is a stunning exhibition of Graham Sutherland early work and later work mainly from Pembrokeshire. It is nearly 12 hours since I saw and I am still highly excited. The exhibition at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art curated by George Shaw is well worth the detour that I did down the M40.

There are all manner of pieces not only finished pieces, but large sketches, small studies and some rough notes in sketchbooks. All showing his versatility of the landscapes and in looking at the work from his time as a war artist. There were some images from 1946 to 49, that show the development to his work that was later produced in Menton, the south of France. 

There was so much to admire in the sheer quality of the work. I was stunned to see that there were 4 rooms filled with his work.

Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to have a more leisurely time to wander through the show as I was on the ridiculous car parking costs, but for show, I would have been happy to pay for 2 hours. Also the gallery had run out of catalogues, so I am going to have to wait to see more of these stunning images.

If you can, then it is a definite must see exhibition.
 

Starting Over

Today is the first day of a new sketchbook and it is always a scary thing. Even though, I have learn to avoid being too precious about a sketch book. This is always a nervous feel as the pen hits the page. I decide to start with a typical tree picture. What drew my attention was the bulky circular trunk of the tree, probably where it had been pollard.

The previous sketch book was a good 200pp A5 and so it has taken some time to get through. A change of tack is moving up to a A4 size, which is exactly the size of the scanner. This is to avoid black line through the spine. Half the number of pages probably 96pp and on slightly heavier cartridge paper rather than the smoother calendared paper that is less opaque.

Another layout, I have changed from using all the pages, to using the right hand page for the main sketch and then use the left hand page to play around with the image or quickly sketch what I felt should be the main form of the image.

Stone and Wood

I was told that Malham Cove is more spectacular that Newbiggin Crags and in some ways it is, but I went to Newbiggin first , when I was at my foundation college and the place is special. The limestone pavements is split and runs like a river at times across the top of the hill. The twisted trees stand out in such a landscape and when the weather is good, made another contrast against the blue sky.

A couple of quick sketches that I did using a brush pen, which I am still getting use too. What was also fascinating was the comparison that I had with the exhibition of Clare Woods exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield.

Morecambe Winter Gardens

The Morecambe Winter Gardens is a old theatre that has been closed a good few years, but it doesn't deserve to wither away and die. We had visited Morecambe as my Grandma and Great Auntie were residents in the past and some times it doesn't pay to revisit old childhood haunts. Morecambe is not now the most glamorus of sea side towns, but does have some gems.

Unfortunately, the centre of the town has been split by some large supermarkets, lying by the side of the railway line. Opposite the Midlands Hotel, a famous Art Deco building seen in many Poirot TV series. The old Marine land sea aquarium has gone as has the old lido. The town reminds me of Brighton in the early 90s, down on its luck and waiting for some thing to happen. It suffered the indignantly of being one of the top five places not to live.

Just like the theatre, Morecambe might find its way to surviving and re-inventing itself to a wider British audience.This is definitely a project that needs supporting as you can imagine how wonderful a performance would be in this theatre,even its current state. I look forward to going back and seeing it revive.

The Singing Line

The view from Box Hill looking down toward Dorking. These are meant to be for series of big block print on a large size. I have been thinking A0 (840 x 1,188mm). So using my large brush pen and changing tack from just wanting to use only colour and no black.

 The view from Box Hill towards Denbies Vineyard with Ranmore church and common on the hill top.

This is another view that used a portrait and wanted to exaggerate the central shape. The idea being have the centre part folding in on itself.

One of the changes to I did was to listening to music, whilst I was at work. I usually do when in my studio, but I decided on trying it out and started with the album, Lungs by Florence and the Machine. It was the track the Drumming Song that grab my mind and led to the next series of sketches.