Art

Art TV

From short films about art to full length documentaries about artists…

Chris Orr – In his own words

I was chuffed recently seeing someone use the term’ Chris Orr-like’ to describe a scene of visual mayhem. During my years as an artist I have been put in various pigeon-holes such as ‘quintessential English’ or a ‘latter-day Hogarth’, but there are other things that I am concerned with. Many of my pictures are composed of well-mixed metaphors, arcane references, allusions and jokes but I have always drawn from life and seen the role of the artist as a viewer and a voyeur. The fantastical and the eccentric are only other ways of getting at the truths of things that I see around me. In the past few years I have begun to produce work about cities that tries to deal with both how things appear and what lies beneath that appearance.

If you visit my studio you might get a notion of the method in my madness by looking at my shelves, in my drawing books and all the other bits and pieces lying around. I have made a principle out of out of untidiness. From the mass of material, visual, literary and musical it is possible to construct hybrid forms that reflect, comment and prophesy. As well as the studio cornucopia, there is an extensive attic in my head from where I can retrieve the memory of items. Nevertheless, there are plans chest drawers full of topographical studies from my travels and many books of life drawing. What does all this add up to? Why do I do it? The short answer is I can’t stop myself. From an early age I have indulged in the habit of re-constructing and de-constructing the world. This is what I am like.

I started making prints in my twenties and discovered the power of the multiple and that a medium like etching extended and enhanced my drawing, opening up new possibilities. Lithography was a slow starter for me, but after a difficult apprenticeship I began to revel in its freedom. Recently silkscreen and digital have begun to play a part. Printmaking is a way of taking my thoughts into a published public domain. The relationship between printmaking and books is very strong. The print is like a page and in much of my printed output there is a hidden text. I invite people to ‘read’ my work as well as to look at it. Printmaking chimed in perfectly with my studio methodology and when I had established my own workshop I became an eager experimenter with the technical potential that printing offered. I saw myself as an alchemist working with base materials to make gold. The basic physical nature of the print processes within the usual canon of original printmaking ‘allows one full control of the output. From the conception of an idea and the making of plates to their refinement through proofing and the printing of the edition, I was fully in control. It suited my one-man-band approach. I identified strongly with William Blake: being married to Catherine, having the press in the house, publishing and distributing the results. My homage to Blake also takes in his capacity as an inventor. In pursuit of my own poetic vision I have discovered, or re-discovered, printing processes such as counter-proofing and relief printing that can serve to liberate creativity.

Chris Orr

Born in 1943, Chris Orr, Royal Academician and Professor Emeritus, is a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. In 2008 he was awarded an MBE...

In Search of David Jones: Artist, Soldier, Poet

Images of David Jones, his numerous war drawings and other works are interwoven with footage of WWI battle-sites as we hear about his time in the trenches, his work with the artist Eric Gill, his spiritual development and the writing of his epic war poem ‘In Parenthesis’.

Contributors include Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales and art critic Richard Cork. Original music by Edward White.

Film made by the David Jones Society.

Click below for a closer look at David Jones’s work >

David Jones

A painter, engraver, poet and author, Jones was born in Kent. He studied at Camberwell School of Art...

David Jones: Welsh Landscape

Director of the David Jones Society, Ann Price-Owen describes how David Jones followed sculptor and calligrapher Eric Gill from Ditchling in Sussex to the isolated and peaceful monastery in Capel-y-Ffin in 1924. As soon as he arrived there Jones began to draw. He found stillness and the power of nature there which led to his painting many landscapes, many of which have a distinctive sense of movement in them. Examples of his work shown in the clip are ‘Hill Pasture, Capel-y-Ffin’, ‘The Orchard’, ‘Sanctus Christus de Capel-y-Ffin’, ‘Tir y Blaenau, Capel-y-Ffin’, and ‘Cabbages and Trees’

Extract from the BBC’s series – Framing Wales: Art in the 20th Century, Episode 2

Click below for a closer look at David Jones’s work >

David Jones

A painter, engraver, poet and author, Jones was born in Kent. He studied at Camberwell School of Art...

George Large Profile by Ken Gofton

GEORGE LARGE PROFILE, by Ken Gofton, Watercolor Artists

When an artist suddenly takes his work off in a completely new direction, winning many new admirers along the way, it’s intriguing to ask how it happened, and why. What was the trigger? Was there some moment of inspiration?

These are questions which British artist George Large finds difficult to answer about his own work. He had studied fine art at college, qualified as a teacher, and was enjoying his career in education. In his leisure time he painted attractive, impressionist, landscapes. Then, quite abruptly, he began to fill his pictures with people, going about their work. And not just people, but very large, dominating figures. They had become, very definitely, the subject. Edouard Manet (French, 1832-1883), one of the founders of modern art, painted portraits of individuals engaged in their occupations, confusing the critics who saw these as separate genres. But Large’s paintings are in no sense portraits. “Absolutely not,” he says gleefully. “I make them up. They are obviously based on something I’ve seen – men repairing the road or working up telegraph poles – but they come out of my head. The arms and bodies are bigger than in real life, with the arms twisted in odd angles like tree branches. The heads are smaller, and tilted upwards.” So where did all this come from? Time for some informed guesses. For a start, the artist confesses that he was always interested in drawing and painting people, all the way back to student life classes. However, he never wanted to pursue ultra-realism. Second, although he now paints in his own distinctive and recognizable way, there are clear links (see Lasting Influences, page 00) with the work of leading 20th century British artists such as Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) and Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). Finally, the point was reached where family finances allowed him to focus full-time on his art, giving him more time to experiment.

At college, oil paints were the preferred medium. As his career has progressed, however, Large has switched almost entirely to watercolor. He likes the speed with which he can mix colours, change tonal values, and achieve unusual textures.

All paintings are created in the studio, but derived from his treasure trove of sketchbooks. He sketches constantly, drawing in a confident, firm line in black ink – a style that recalls the fact that he’s a former Vice-President of the Society of Wood Engravers. And he has a magpie’s eye. A documentary about his work, Trust Me, I’m an Artist, made by his British gallery, Goldmark, shows him not only sketching landscapes to use as backgrounds to his figures, but enthusing over the texture of rusty chains, pebbles on a beach, and pieces of scrap metal. All go into the sketchbook for future reference.

Women feature in a few of his paintings – see Late Travellers/Hen Party/Lace (page 00). The vast majority, though, are of men, in all kinds of working situations, from building and fishing to agriculture and engineering.

There is, however, one important division in his work. In 1979, he married his second wife, Pamela, and they honeymooned in Malta. They fell in love with the Mediterranean island, and subsequently bought a house there. The couple now spend four months there every winter, and he has a studio there, as he does at his British home. Scenes of Maltese life, such as Baroque Chapel or Guiseppe Framer are a major part of his output, and he has a big following on the island. His Maltese paintings tend to be brighter, reflecting both the stronger sunshine and the local love of color.

When he embarks on a new painting, he reaches first for a sketchbook. This is not just a case of looking for source material. Composition is an overriding consideration for him. Says Large: “I just doodle in the sketchbook, until I’m satisfied in my head that I have got it right. I may need to modify the background, perhaps creating or emphasizing a V-shape to direct the eye to the figures. I look for alignments everywhere, again to lead the eye. One reason for distorting the figures is that they are consciously designed. The curves and straight lines and odd angles are all part of the pattern.”

This emphasis on composition has been duly noted. After one of Large’s solo shows in Malta, he received a letter from the leading British artist and teacher, Victor Pasmore (1908- 1998), saying “I thought your sense of pattern and design with inter-twining forms very interesting and unique”.

And Anthony J. Lester, a one-time paintings expert on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, and a member of the International Association of Art Critics, wrote that Large’s complex compositions, “bursting with vitality and primary idiosyncratic colors, which ingeniously weave together the figurative and topographical, always delight my critical eye”. So there you have it – composition is a key element in this artist’s approach. Once that composition has been carefully determined on the sketchbook page, he uses the traditional technique of ruled squares and diagonals to scale it up to two or three times the original size, onto a sheet of 2001b Bockingford hot-pressed paper.

Large uses Winsor and Newton brushes and paints. He has an extensive range of colors, but restricts himself to very few – perhaps four or five, perhaps only two – in any one painting, to get a harmonious result. He builds his paintings out from the focal point, which generally means the head of one of the figures. ‘Lost edges’ are not a favored technique: he’s very careful to place light against dark and dark against light, so that all elements are easily read. There are no whites in most of his paintings – Lace is one possible exception – so he has no use for masking fluid. Pale shades are achieved by blotting out with tissue paper, and if the tissue is slightly crumpled, that can be a means of achieving interesting texture, too. The dark tones come from using thick paint, “almost straight from the tube”, rather than going over and over with multiple washes.

But none of that should imply that it is a very rapid process. Large goes over and over the heads and hands of his figures, adding and removing paint and adjusting the tones to give them a sculptured, almost Cubist, feel.

It is now more than 30 years since he switched his attention to figures rather than straightforward landscapes. In that time, his work has inevitably evolved. Not least, the idea of people against a recognizable backdrop has lessened, and the figures, with their focus on their work, have become even bigger and more dominating.

The hundreds of paintings he has produced explore his chosen theme in great variety. On one level, they might be considered a hymn to the dignity of labor. More prosaically, they’re a record of the hardship, monotony and discomfort of many manual jobs. Or yet again, they are one individual’s dedicated take on the human condition. Could there be a better subject for an artist?

LASTING INFLUENCES

Throughout the 1920s to at least the 1950s, a number of leading British artists included figures in their paintings that were stylized, distorted or symbolic rather than strictly realistic. This was not a school of art so much as an identifiable thread. The artists included William Roberts, Edward Burra, and Percy Wyndham Lewis, and all have had a lasting influence on the work of George Large.

His greatest hero from this period, though, was Sir Stanley Spencer, best remembered for his updated depictions of Biblical scenes in a modern setting, and especially in the village of Cookham where he spent most of his life. While a student at Hornsey College of Arts and Crafts, Large wrote a thesis on Spencer, visited him in Cookham, and was invited to paint alongside him in Cookham churchyard.

George Large

His complex compositions, bursting with vitality and primary idiosyncratic colours, which ingeniously weave together the figurative...

Recent Acquisitions – April 2013

We are delighted to be able to offer you recent acquisitions, featuring work by artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Antoni Tapies, Victor Pasmore, Bruce McLean, Raoul Dufy, Jean Cocteau, Duncan Grant, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Julian Trevelyan and Mary Fedden. Click below to view in our turning pages catalogue.

Recent Acquisitions

We buy and sell new work every day. Click here to view some of our recent acquisitions. Get in touch if there is something that you are searching for...

Kandinsky & The Art Nouveau, 1909

We are delighted to present Wassily Kandinsky, heliogravures after woodcuts, published in 1909.

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, born in Moscow in 1866, is universally acknowleged as the founder of abstraction and the father of modern art...

How We Met: Dora Holzhandler and Nigel Kennedy

We are delighted to announce that gallery artist Dora Holzhandler has recently been commissioned to paint a portrait of violinist Nigel Kennedy which has now been used as his new album cover.

Their friendship has been the subject of an article in the Independent on Sunday (below). Portrait by Jean Goldsmith.

How We Met: Dora Holzhandler and Nigel Kennedy from The Independent on Sunday 14th April 2013

Nigel Kennedy, 56

After making his recording debut in 1984 with Elgar’s Violin Concerto, it was Kennedy’s recording of Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ with the English Chamber Orchestra in 1989 that catapulted him to fame, with the album selling more than two million copies. Kennedy has since expanded his repertoire to include jazz. He lives in London with his wife.

I was looking a bit morosely in the window of what used to be my local Oddbins in Belsize Village [in north London], as it was now an art gallery. The owner came out and said, “Are you that violinist? I have this painter I’m displaying who loves to hear you playing.”

So I walked in and was confronted by this amazing naive art: Dora’s use of colour was vivid and there was some of her Jewish culture in some of the pieces. I fell in love with the innocence of her work.

Sometimes people become more closed off as they get older. So it was a surprise to meet someone of advanced years who was so young in spirit. She’s the archetypal hippie. She’s always saying, “Yeah man!” and her daughter still lives on a retreat in San Francisco.

Dora’s been to my house to watch some of our chaotic rehearsals and it didn’t flummox her that sometimes they get a bit out of hand with all the drinking. She’s at home with it all, as she’s very understanding of the people around her.

My house is filled with instruments: trumpets, guitars, saxophones, all kinds of violins. Her home is like that, too – her pictures are everywhere. Every surface is covered with something; even the telephone is splattered with paint.

We both feel lucky to be involved in an artistic endeavour as there’s always something new that stops us losing enthusiasm for what life has to offer.

She’s been asking me to play Vivaldi for her for quite a while. But I was reluctant. In my life I’ve played all kinds music and Vivaldi is like one small part of it. So for people to just concentrate on the one per cent of my work feels strange. But in the end, I played it to her, and seeing her enthusiasm, it felt worth it.

In fact, I think The Four Seasons could be an interesting subject for her to take on visually; to represent the four seasons with four pictures, using the same scene each time. She’d do it brilliantly.

Dora Holzhandler, 85

The London-based painter’s naive work is permeated by her childhood memories and Jewish roots. Her pieces are on show in the Museum of Modern Art in Glasgow, and the Jewish Museum, London.

I had an exhibition last year and the gallery was near Nigel’s house in north London. In the planning stages the lady who runs the gallery told me how Nigel passes by sometimes and I said, “Oh, that’s wonderful.”

I’ve always loved hearing his playing on the radio, The Four Seasons in particular. I love it so much I’ve actually made it one of my “Desert Island Discs”, as I’m going to be appearing on that [Radio 4] show. Yes, he’s an accomplished violinist, but there’s something extra there: I’ve always felt that he has played from the heart.

So the gallerist invited him to my private view. On the night I didn’t think he was going to turn up, then just before it closed, lo and behold, he appeared. We hugged and he told me how much he loved my work, and he’s been a great friend ever since.

He has this cute haircut and style: he likes to be hip. But don’t get me on this subject – I didn’t miss the 1960s, you know. He always says things like, “Yeah man, far out.” That’s hippie language and I love it, though I’m not a hippie.

He asked me to do his portrait, though he said, “I can’t sit still!” I said to him that it doesn’t matter. I don’t need people to sit for me, as I paint from memory. People say my painting has a certain childlike quality to it. Well, Nigel has a childlike face, so I think it fits well.

I went to rehearsals at his house to do some sketches. He was practising with his group he’s doing a tour with, playing some classical music as well as jazz. I’m not into jazz but it was very good, as he makes everything sound wonderful.

The day I finished the portrait, I went to his flat to show it to him and he seemed really pleased. I asked, “Would you play Four Seasons for me?” The moment felt nice, but it was only when I look back on it that I realise how extraordinary it was. He’s such a wonderful man but he’ll go down in history as a very great musician.

Poland is a common ground for us. My parents came from Poland and he’s married to a Polish lady. They’ve got a flat in Krakow and we’ve talked about the fact I might be having an exhibition there and he might give a concert; it would be great to do that together.

A selection of Holzhandler’s paintings are at Goldmark gallery, Rutland (doraholzhandler.co.uk). Kennedy’s UK tour starts on 24 April in Edinburgh (0844 249 1000, eventim.co.uk). His new album, ‘Recital’, is out on Sony Classical.

Dora Holzhandler

Dora Holzhandler’s beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the...

Jan Hardisty: An Introduction

LIMITED INTRODUCTORY OFFER – 30% OFF FOR THE FIRST 10 OF EACH EDITION

With exceptional vision and creativity, artist Jan Hardisty prepares and arranges unusual objects into striking compositions that he photographs with his large format camera.

This insightful short film introduces us to his painstaking methods and the effects he wishes to achieve by challenging the boundaries between art and photography.

Click below for a closer look at Jan Hardisty’s work >

Jan Hardisty

Jan Hardisty was born in 1948. He is half Danish and spent his early years in Aarhus, Denmark before his family settled in North London...

Jan Hardisty – Series

Building Blocks

Using wooden bricks to stand in for objects, together with recognisable forms such as decanters and bottles, I created a series of staged still lifes in which real objects and abstract forms share the same dramatic space as if actors on a stage.

I also see them as theatre sets, playing with notions of scale.

Folded Paper

I was intrigued by the notion that a single sheet of folded paper could be used in an endless variety of ways to create images that suggested subject matter ranging from the abstract to the architectural.

I made a series of pictures using drawing paper that I had worked on with charcoal. This gave the paper a texture and an apparent weight and solidity.

I decided that the scenes should all be created by the paper being folded only once.

This discipline employs the minimum alteration possible to a 2D piece of paper to create the illusion of three dimensions within the photograph.

String Works

I wanted to take some pictures influenced by my theatrical experience, so I made a box set with a series of bars from which I could suspend cut out shapes with cotton thread.

I am also interested in blurring the boundaries between photographic representation and a freer and more abstract type of picture.

The inherent difficulty with photography is that the camera records what is seen as real. I wanted to explore ways of using the medium in more abstract ways without resorting to digital trickery.

I became interested in how I could break up the surface of the image, how to disrupt the normal perception of three dimensions within a photograph. Hanging flat two dimensional shapes in front of the objects in the picture created flatness but also depth. This suggested an alternative layer of understanding on the depicted physical world.

Jan Hardisty

Jan Hardisty was born in 1948. He is half Danish and spent his early years in Aarhus, Denmark before his family settled in North London...

March ’13 Mixed Artist Catalogue

We are delighted to be able to present our March 2013 mixed artist catalogue, featuring work by artists such as John Bellany, Reginald Brill, George Chapman, Cecil Collins, Eileen Cooper, Dennis Creffield, Greg Daville, Elisabeth Frink, Terry Frost, Maggi Hambling, Patrick Hughes, Augustus John, Margaret Mellis, Takashi Murakami, John Nash, Victor Pasmore, John Piper, Patrick Procktor, Michael Rothenstein, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, Valerie Thornton, Joe Tilson and Julian Trevelyan.

Recent Acquisitions

We buy and sell new work every day. Click here to view some of our recent acquisitions. Get in touch if there is something that you are searching for...

Victor Pasmore: Recent Acquisitions

Victor Pasmore (1908-1998) was one of the most important abstract artists of the 20th century. The art critic Herbert Read said that Pasmore’s move into abstraction was the most revolutionary event of post-war British art.

Victor Pasmore

Born in 1908 in Surrey, Victor Pasmore attended evening classes at Central School of Art between 1927 and 1931. He went on to teach at...

Harry Ousey: Selected Works

Click below for a closer look at Harry Ousey’s work >

Harry Ousey

Harry Ousey (1915-1985) was an abstract painter who became associated with the St Ives School...

Lithographies Originales, 1925

Note: We have one copy only of each of these prints

We are delighted to be able to offer original lithographs published in 1925 by artists such as Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Utrillo, Jules Pascin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees Van Dongen, Aristide Maillol, Albert Marquet, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, Jeanne Bardey, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Luc-Albert Moreau, Maurice Asselin, Maurice Denis.

Click below to check availability and view all works in this catalogue >

Bruce McLean: Studio Visit (2009)

TateShots visited the studio of Scottish performance artist and painter Bruce McLean, as he put finishing touches to work for an exhibition at the Bernard Jacobson gallery, London.

His 1971 performance ‘Pose Work for Plinths’ is regarded as an iconic artwork; an expression of the rebellion McLean and his contemporaries staged during his time at art school in the 1960s.

In this video Bruce explains how he regarded the Pose Work as kind of a joke, and describes why he believes art and artists have the power to change the world. He even shows us his design for an alternative to the Houses of Parliament.

Bruce McLean

Bruce McLean, painter, printmaker, sculptor and performance artist was born in Glasgow in 1940. He studied at Glasgow School of Art and St Martin's, London...