Creating still life – art in process

I live in a very small flat – with one Other Half and three cats – and this really is the main space that I have in which to create art. It’s essentially why I aim to produce original, small art for small homes – I know what living in a small space actually means!

And that’s also why my process for still life paintings is to photograph the subjects – and then paint from the screen you see here: I simply don’t have the room to set up a still life and then paint from ‘life’.

The roll of felt is used as my background because it absorbs the light rather than reflecting it back, as black card does, for instance, and I like painting modern subjects in a way that nods toward a more classical look. I love Rembrandt’s dramatic use of light and dark for a reason.

I do, however, have a plastic crate in which I keep basics with which I can create still life works. After seeing Matisse in the Studio at the Royal Academy last year, I realised that I was doing what he had done, collecting bits and pieces and then using them in photos, paintings or drawings.

For that reason, I call it my Matisse Box, because it echoes how one of my personal household gods carried ceramics and fabrics and more around with him to set dress paintings. Indeed, it inspired me to put these odds and ends together and to collect more.

This is a time-lapse of creating a still life for a painting.

The resulting painting hasn’t been done yet, but when it has been, it – together with others – will be available to buy at www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SmARTartByAmanda.

Eagle eyes view the English capital

Red House, by Marc Gooderham

You could be forgiven for thinking that developers in London today have fetishised both height and a desire to build the oddest shapes possible, which then demand to be nicknamed.

Not everything created from such a base is bad. ‘The Gherkin’ remains an elegant addition to the City, while the Tate Modern extension is appropriate. But some are simply dire, with particularly dishonourable mentions for One Blackfriars – ‘The Vase’ – and 20 Fenchurch Street – ‘The Walkie-Talkie’. And let’s not mention the thrusting inelegance of ‘The Shard’.

Sadly, chunks of a more human-scale London are being torn away in the name of … well, in the name of corporate profits. Character replaced by a forest of largely characterless glass and steel.

In such times then, it is a particular pleasure to see an exhibition such as London Eye 2 at The Millinery Works in Islington.

Works by 15n artists are on display, all available to buy. The creative talents behind the works span generations and include Sir Peter Blake, the British pop artist still best known for his iconic Beatles Sgt Pepper album cover.

Camden Town Tube, by James McKinnon

Here there are a number of limited edition prints in his distinctive collage style and love of pop culture, including Piccadilly Circus, the Convention of Comic Book Characters, and River Thames, Regatta, with its nod toward a steampunk sensibility.

Several of the artists turn their gaze reflectively on a London that is fast disappearing; in some cases, derelict or covered in graffiti.

This is a large part of Marc Gooderham’s practice. Here, he has five works on display. Acrylic painting Waiting for You and Fill Your Heart (pastel on black paper) both convey a sense of the slightly shabby, while The Rio Cinema, Dalston and The Vogue Cinema (both pastels on black paper) convey dusk and night time scenes devoid of humanity, with a deep sense of loneliness.

Yet in The Red House (pastel on black paper), he also gives us a bright blue sky and a burst of glorious colour. Mounted and framed in black, this is a work that adds light to the room.

If the exhibition as a whole gives us a sense of London on a human scale, Marc is not the only artist whose work conveys a sense of loneliness. We can see it too in the deserted station of Camden Town Tube and the deserted street of Back Lane Hampstead, both by James MacKinnon.

Eric Rimmington’s Above Ground conveys the same sort of mood – and even his Lunchtime, with sunbathers sitting in isolation, has something of the same atmosphere.

Butler's Wharf, Shad Thames

Terry Scales’s Butler’s Wharf, Shad Thames features the striking bridges between wharf buildings near Tower Bridge – again, the absence of people lends a haunting quality.

Giles Winter’s works – four of which show residential streets at dusk, with corners of lit rooms visible, but nobody present, take us in the same direction.

Just one – The Noctambulist – has a solitary, hat-and-coated figure walking away from the viewer, almost out of the canvas, giving us something incredibly Hopperesque. His other work here, Bus Shelter, is an incredible take on rain in the city, brilliantly executed.

Peta Bridle’s etchings continue the decaying, lonely idea, So too, do Eleanor Crow’s human-devoid paintings, though the likes of Near London Fields, Early Afternoon (Deriocte Street, just south of London Fields) to Mornington Terrace, May Evening, 2018.

For me, two artists stand alone in presenting a different view: Nessie Ramm’s The Parakeets of Richmond Park celebrates the spread of ring-necked parakeets across the city, framing them in an antique Victorian frame, against a subdued background of all those towers. It’s clever and charming.

But personally, I admit taking a special delight in Melissa Scott-Miller’s work.

Islington Front Steps is so bright but spot on, and the same can be said of the fabulous Islington Back Gardens in a Heatwave (left). Both are glorious oils that will add light to any room in which they hang.

Back in the early 1970s, I lived in west London, in a fairly typical London town house.

As such, these works by Scott-Miller have a real resonance. They might not portray something I actually saw, but looking at them, I genuinely see something that I recognise.

All in all, this is a superb exhibition. Whether you can buy or not, I seriously recommend it.

Find out more at via @MillineryWorks.

Not all revolutionary art inspires

Vladimir Lenin in Smolny

Picasso famously declared that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”.

And that is certainly one of the things that art can do, but if that’s the sort of artistic experience you’re looking for, then don’t look toward the Royal Academy’s new exhibition, Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932.

For this centenary year of the revolution itself, the RA got in quick. And while there is much to recommend a visit, there are also flaws and clunky curation to contend with.

It would help, for instance, if there was some context provided for the events of October 1917: even a meagre note that Czarist Russia was no paradise on Earth would be useful, if only to remind visitors that the revolution did not come out of some sort of vacuum.

Instead, we begin with a room dedicated to visions of Lenin and Stalin – as though the roots of the revolution itself are in the cults of the leaders alone.

The defence of Petrograd

Actually, set aside whatever your political and philosophical views of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union are, and there are some fine paintings here: Issak Brodsky’s Lenin and Demonstration from 1919 is very good: the eyes give you a sense of a powerful and charismatic character, a real human being, in marked contrast to other more iconised portrayals.

It’s light years away from the later ‘socialist realism’. And much better. Indeed, the later, idealised ‘socialist realist’ paintings of agricultural workers are profound only in their blandness.

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s painting of Lenin in his coffin (hidden from the world for decades because it was considered so controversial) inhabits the same world as other death paintings. Vladimir Lenin in Smolny, again by Brodsky but this time from 1930, is also excellent with its extraordinary sense of simplicity and lack of pomp.

Space Force Construction

The next room gives us works that seek to make industrialisation and industrial work heroic. It includes some brilliant photography – not least, Arkady Shaiket’s Construction of the Moscow Telegraphic Centre from 1928 – but also paintings that make workers look like robots. That might – or might not – have been deliberate, but it’s what we have in front of us.

One large canvas portrays three women in a cotton mill: not one of them has a facial expression or characteristic that marks her from the others. If this was supposed to convince people of the wonderfulness of the Soviet Union and industry, then it's difficult to see how it would.

There is some Kandinsky here and some Chagall – both of whose work is always worth seeing – and plenty of Malevich (I had enough at the Tate Modern’s 2014 exhibition, frankly, but this was new for the OH), although Landscape With Five Houses (1932) is worth seeing again.

Works like Space Force Construction (1921) by Lyubov Popova make you think positively of Constructivism.

There is an extraordinary design for a worker’s flat that has been recreated here – it still feels modern in the minimalist way that design TV shows love.

Construction of the Moscow Telegraphic Centre

However, it’s slightly surreal to view the displayed figurines in porcelain – revolutionary versions of Royal Doulton shepherdesses. The printed fabrics one does expect – but not these.

A wall in one room displays a series of portraits of cultural giants such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich, who pushed the boundaries of their art forms – yet there is with no real suggestion as to how we should view these in the wider context of the exhibition.

Given some of the mutterings on social media, by the sort of people who declare themselves experts on something without having actually seen it, it’s possible that the curators simply felt too wary of any backlash if they penned something that looked overtly positive, and have left such sections almost blank in terms of explanations. 

We have adverts, food coupons that are designed way beyond the strictly utilitarian and examples of works that celebrate the pre-revolutionary ‘Mother Russia’.

The final room is a disaster: there are some interesting works, but we end up with a logjam of viewers because there is (yet more) film to watch and the only way to see it is from a narrow passageway.

Adjoining this is the almost-final exhibit – a black box where you can sit and watch pictures flash by of people killed by the Soviet regime. Its black boxness seems to invoke the religious nature of Mecca. 

Tatlin's glider

Before this, though, Tatlin’s glider rises above much else on display – perhaps because one can view it without trying to understand or impose onto it anything overtly political. Displayed beautifully, on it’s own and turning gently beneath a dome, it conveys a sense of hope.

The Russian Revolution offered hope to many – including to artists. But the hope died as time passed: as counter-revolution caused war and suffering, and as the regime responded with a clamping-down on creative thinking and anything that might be consider ‘individual’.

The Defence of Petrograd, by Alexander Deineka (1928) is an epic canvas that sees blank-faced men head to the front to defend the new Russia. Above, on a gantry, wounded men return.

Alexander Samokhvalov’s painting of a shot putter has a sense of being extraordinarily modern, though painted in 1933.

The Shot Putter

Much is pure propaganda, but it’s also evidence that propaganda can be good art.

Film footage throughout includes Eisentein’s October. We face the question of whether the Odessa steps is propaganda? Well, yes. But  is it good art too? Absolutely! Just as Leni Riefenstahl’s films are. Will seeing works by such artists ‘convert’ you? That’s up to you and you alone.

Just as you can appreciate great Western religious art without becoming religious, so you can see this exhibition without taking on a specific political view (pro or anti).

However, there’s an extraordinary sense of modernity and vision throughout the exhibition that would make it difficult not to mourn the betrayal of the spirit of the revolution.

It’s a fascinating view – albeit a flawed one. Inevitably, it’s hard to see it through anything other than the prism of one’s own political leanings, popular perception and history books, but if you can manage to push beyond, there are rewards here – as well as things to deeply irritate.

Some of what is on view is poor. But some is very good indeed.

You have until 17 April to decide whether for not you wish to see it.

Royal Academy

Picasso portraits give a fascinating overview

Self-portrait with Palette

When you live in a large city it’s arguably the way of things that you will not know about every cultural event taking place, but even allowing for that, it was a surprise to realise, at the start of this week, that I’d been unaware of a major exhibition in London.

The National Portrait Gallery, in conjunction with the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, has been staging Picasso Portraits, which ends tomorrow.

With little time left, The Other Half and I booked tickets for last night and duly made our way there after work. And after all, given the Catalan giant’s observation that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” what better way could there be to begin a weekend?

It’s a career-spanning collection that takes us from the end of the 19th century to the 1970s.

Works on display include a small number of photographic portraits to a sketch on a paper napkin to fragments on cards to works in oil to sculptures. It’s an excellent way to get an idea of the range of Picasso’s work and styles.

Self-portrait in charcoal and chalk

The earliest works include some of the most fascinating, including two self portraits – one, sporting a wig from 1897 and the other, in charcoal and chalk from 1889-1900.

Both have an intensity about them, but the latter (reproduction does not do justice to the light of it) particularly caught my eye.

It is difficult with Picasso – perhaps more than with most other artists – to separate artist and art. There is a sense of raw animal power about the subject in both these; of a force of nature that gives you an insight into what he created.

Close by is a 1901 portrait of the French art critic and writer Gustave Coquiot that seems to nod toward Fauvism in its use of green in the subject’s skin, and with a dollop of impasto at the shirt’s throat drawing the eye.

From a personal perspective, I ‘get’ the early Cubist works, but I can’t say I ‘like’ them, with their de-humanising analysis and the muddy palette, though the Head of a Woman bust is more interesting than the canvases.

Far more revealing, for me, are works such as Self-portrait with Palette from 1906, where we see a recognisable style emerging, that combines the classical and the primitive – and leaves us with a sense of the emotion.

Later rooms include one with a range of portraits of Olga Picasso – from the naturalistic to the Cubist.

Portrait of Olga Picasso

And here is the perfect chance to highlight a prime bugbear about this exhibition: the curator’s notes next to each work.

In one exhibit, sitting next to a sketch showing a friend of Picasso in a brothel, the words talk of the friend “carousing with a drunken prostitute”. Well, “carousing” is one way to put it.

Similarly, in a later work – a drawing of the artist Raphael having sex while the pope draws curtains aside to watch – there is no mention of the act, but we are informed that Raphael was known to have an ‘amorous’ character.

This terror of mentioning S.E.X. is only one aspect of the issue: throughout, we’re told what Picasso was thinking as he worked.

Now, it is a fair bet that, when an artist is, say, in a strained relationship, that might show up in their work, but asserting such connections as fact is irritating at best.

However, that is what happened in the room dedicated to Olga – Woman in a Hat (Olga) from 1935 is pretty much definitively described as making a sarcastic comment on his wife’s love of hats, yet also as showing her in such a way as to pity her even as their relationship broke apart.

Woman in a Hat (Olga)

Portrait of Olga Picasso from 1923 has a generally classical approach, yet the eyes have something of the mask-like look of Self-portrait with Palette – but even here the curator is straining to tell us that the formality suggests the relationship was already in trouble.

It’s hardly rocket science to suppose that a self-portrait from 1972 – effectively a skull with a piece missing – was influenced by a sense of his own mortality (he died the following year) but do we really need this stating as though we are incapable of making the links on our own? Indeed, I’m going to suggest that such notes detract from the power of just such a work.

I never use audio guides in galleries, in the UK or abroad, precisely because I think that they get in the way of you really seeing the works.

It’s entirely possible that I might miss something that the in a painting or sculpture that had not been upmost in the artist had in mind at the time of its creation, but then that personal experience of art is part of the ongoing process of creativity; part of what makes art more than imply objects.

Self-portrait, 1972

Yet on occasion, the notes skate over what many people might not know, which could be said briefly and might add something.

In another room, for instance, two notes mention Matisse, yet with no mention of the sense of rivalry between them – most of it on Picasso’s part (see Hilary Spurling’s excellent biography of the French artist), thus not giving any real sense of the claim that the colours of one painting are a deliberate echoing of Matisse.

The other problem here is the lack of any works from the Blue Period. It feels like an obvious gap in what otherwise is a successful use of one type of art to give that career perspective.

All this said, there is plenty to delight – not least some of the more informal works Picasso executed for friends, including a 1957 sketch of the French composer and pianist, Francis Poulenc, which shows how he could get away with caricaturing his friends.

Unlike some exhibitions, this is also not so long as to exhaust. You still have time – just about – to catch Picasso Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It finishes tomorrow – and then we have until 2018 for Tate Modern’s just-announced Picasso blockbuster.

National Portrait Gallery

Discovering art in the internet age

Short and Stout by Susan Harrell

After musing over the merits of this year’s Turner Prize nominees – and trying to remain open-minded and positive – I was left not with any sense of elation or revelation, but certainly with a need to go back and look at some rather more ‘traditional’ work.

If the big galleries seem to obsess about the latest trend in conceptual art, then the screen on your desk or your smartphone can provide a door to a world where painting and drawing and printing are alive and well – and most certainly not just ‘stuck in the past’.

Technologies may change, new materials may be developed, but that doesn’t have to mean that the only way to approach art in today’s world is a dumbing-down of traditional art skills: rather, it can provide the chance to explore new ways of creating visual images.

Moscow Taxi by Mattias Adolfsson

And so, remembering August’s exercise, which came about as a direct response to an online conversation where someone was voicing the doubt that any real art existed any more, here is another set of brief introductions to artists and their work that I have encountered in cyberspace.

They deliberately range across style, subject and medium – and also place: one of the great advantages of the internet is that it allows us to find things from the other side of the world that we should not otherwise be likely to know about.

But then again, art is a universal.

Southwold by Annie Cowdrey

Annie Cowdrey’s work is varied, from pen and ink to oil to watercolour to lino cuts; while her subjects range from landscape to portraiture.

Based in the south west of France (lucky, lucky her), she maintains a particular interest in the processes of art.

It’s well worth reading any notes she makes on works: for instance, her comments on how working on a portrait is not just about the subject but about the artist themselves, is a fascinating idea.

Three Trees by Annie Cowdrey

It’s so easy to view the artist simply as a conduit when it comes to portrayals of other people, but inevitably part of the painter comes through in the subject.

Her works in white ink on black paper – particularly those featuring trees – have a ghostly and almost mythical quality. They’re so simple, one might think, but they are also so effective that they stay long in the mind.

Personally, they instantly conjure childhood journeys from Tebay to Newbiggin on dark nights, when the car lights lit up the skeletal trees ahead.

Roy's lillies

You can follow Annie in Twitter at @anniethepainter. And find out more at anniethepainter.com.

@fabartstuff is different to anything in the realm of art that I’ve written about previously.

This is a three-way, Twitter collaboration between Dr Theresa Porrett, who works in the NHS supporting nurse specialists, and describes herself as a “would-be photo journalist”, health policy analyst, writer and commentator Roy Lilley, and digital professional Fran Maher.

Their feed offers a range of art-related tweets, including retweets of works by various artists, but it also includes Lilley’s own iPad pictures, which are frankly amazing.

His results are put into particularly sharp perspective by my own rather clumsy digital efforts – ‘how on earth do you even find a stylus that works properly on an iPad?’ I find myself asking, every time a new work pops up on my Twitter feed.

St Paul's by Roy Lilley

And that is no minor question. But even such a technology-related matter doesn’t alter the basic point that, the tech aside, he’s simply a damned good artist.

Although he also paints traditional watercolours too, Lilley’s portraits and landscapes done on the tablet have a distinctive and highly effective style, and are a prefect illustration of what I mean by new technologies not meaning a waning of skills.

@fabartstuff is new, but what it also shows is just how much talent for and love of art there is out there, across all walks of life – and also how the internet can offer us a portal both to discover and share a wide range of art.

Washed Clean by Susan Harrell

Meanwhile, taking a leap across The Pond, Susan Harrell is a self-trained oil painter from North Carolina, who creates photorealistic works on canvas, wood and aluminium.

I’ve loved photorealism since my teens, and these works simply make me awed at the effect.

Her work ranges across subjects, but it’s in her still life paintings where the approach really works – not least in her sometimes quirky compositions and unusual takes on otherwise traditional subjects.

In the 2013 oil on panel, Washed Clean, for instance, she takes a very conventional bunch of red grapes, but gives it a distinctly modern twist by painting it from a bird’s eye view, in a metal colander, gaining wonderful light, textures and reflections in the process.

Three's Company by Susan Harrell

Short and Stout is a beautifully-realised picture of an old-fashioned, stove-top kettle – but standing outside, so that the sky and landscape are reflected in the curved metal.

Three’s Company takes a trio of apples, but this is no cliché. Instead, she paints two of them in a damp plastic bag that is clinging, in places, to the fruits.

Follow Susan at ‪@susanharrellart and find out more about her work at www.susanharrell.com. 

David Stamp hails from Plymouth and is now based on the other side of the Tamar in Cornwall.

Self taught, he works in acrylic, watercolour and mixed media.

We Have Green Light by David Stamp

We Have the Green Light – a mixed-media, semi-abstract work – is indicative of the light that he conveys in his flower paintings.

And here seems the perfect moment to mention another little point: David’s subjects matters of choice include flowers – surely a ‘feminine’ subject, while Susan Harrell’s photorealism is a style that is most often associated with male artists.

The reality is that art is a world where we can find such stereotypical and limiting ideas being happily ignored, as artists find and develop the styles that suit them – not on the basis of preconceived gender roles.

Market Jew Street, Penzanze by David Stamp

But back to David’s work. The mixed-media, semi-abstract approach is not just to be found in the flower paintings.

Market Jew Street, Penzance (the name comes from the Cornish, Marghas Yow, which means Thursday Market), includes aspects of collage and, as David himself challenges viewers: “spot the tin mine chimney in the centre”.

How much more Cornish can you get?

To find out more, David’s own website is at ‪davidstamp.co.uk‪, while he tweets at @stamper485‪.

The sheer breadth of art that you can find online is illustrated by ‪@GardenGallery2, which‪ is the Twitter feed for Frances, a Derbyshire-based artist who creates felted art, most of which is inspired by the wildlife in that county.

Felted Hare by Garden Gallery

This is art that is craft-based – which would have been looked down on snootily in the past.

The works produced have lovely colour, while the felting provides textural interests that Frances matches extremely well to her subjects.

Frances doesn’t appear to have any obvious outlet for selling her works, so – and I’m guessing here – for her, this seems to be mainly a hobby.

It’s another way of seeing that the desire to create goes far beyond the walls of galleries and beyond those who studied at art school.

The internet offers the chance to explore a hugely democratic world of art.

‪Check out (and ‘like’!) her Facebook page for more examples of her work.

Raygun by Mattias Adolfsson

Mattias Adolfsson is a freelance illustrator from Sweden, producing some highly imaginative – and fun – ink drawings and, with these, some exquisite books.

Raygun, for instance, brings to mind steampunk, but then gives it a delightful, fantastical spin by turning a sci-fi hand weapon into a dragon.

Similarly, Unorthodox Friendship takes the idea of a boy meeting a dinosaur and turns that on its head by making both of them robots.

These works have real charm and humour, while his blog is a wonderful insight into an artist’s sketchbooks: Moscow Taxi is gloriously, bonkersly detailed – something that’s far from unique in Mattias’s work.

Unorthodox Friendship by Mattias Adopfsson

Ilustration is a particular art form, but what you find when looking at works like these is that it also provokes another way of examining that old question about what constitutes art, particularly when it comes to highly graphic work.

When I was in my teens and my teachers were busy mapping out a career path for me as a graphic artist, I couldn’t see that as having any link with ‘fine art’. Or put another way, with what I considered to be ‘real’ art.

Knight by Roy Lilley

Nowadays, I look at works like this and conclude that they’re all art, and that one thing that conceptual art achieves, oddly enough, is to help to eliminate some of the old definitions that created a sort of artistic caste system.

And after all, who paints history or mythological or religious scenes any more?

So whether it’s Mattias’s illustrations or Garden Gallery’s felted hares or Roy Lilley’s digital creations, it’s all art: simples.

You’ll find Mattias’s blog at mattiasa.blogspot.co.uk and you can follow him on Twitter at ‪@MattiasInk‪.