SARGENT STEVENSON
John Singer Sargent was no revolutionary artist but his capacity for effortless representation is pretty much beyond discussion. Being a bit of a Sargent fan has been one of my best kept secrets since seeing the Tate Gallery exhibition in the 1990′s – It’s hard to imagine London before the Tate Modern now!. The thing...
BRAVE NEW ART SCHOOL
I just read a post in Jonathan Jones’ art blog about the new Turps Art School in South London; a school that teaches painting in a contemporary context without charging the massive tuition fees of university art schools. By contemporary context I mean that this is no reactionary or classicist endeavour out to...
VERMEER’S HANGOVER
It’s been Dutch painting for me over the last few months and one interesting thing I noticed is the huge contrast between the work of Jan Steen, who was born in Leiden in 1626, and Jan Vermeer who was born in Delft – some ten miles from Leiden – six years later. Two...
AN IMAGE OF THE SELF
That same rectangular shape with a bite missing on its left side repeats itself like a heartbeat, always the same yet each time different and unique. The thick pink and green slime has a gastric effect that could well end up with an unhealthy craving, or perhaps disgust, for chewing on something rubbery,...
ARTIST QUOTE: JEREMY DELLER
“Artists don’t paint these days, just as we don’t go to work on a horse.” Jeremy Deller I remember hearing this when Jeremy Deller was in the news for wining the Turner Prize and thinking that things are not quite that simple. I’ve just come across it again in Martin Gayford’s book...
OIL ON SCREEN
Circa 2003 AD: “One of your paintings has been sold over the internet” “What kind of collector would buy a painting he’s seen only on a computer screen?” “You’d be surprised, it’s becoming quite common… ” “Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves after seeing her in a portrait and then rejected her...
PRINTED LIGHT: VERMEER AND THE CAMERA OBSCURA
I’m proud to present the first guest writer at A Studio with a View! Jane Jelley is a painter living in Oxford UK, who contacted me after reading my post titled Life in the Camera Obscura and pointed me to the wonderful experiment she had just carried out in her studio. I can’t...
10 LESSER KNOWN PAINTING MASTERPIECES
Contemporary obsession with labeling and imaging seems to drive the major art museums to promote only one or a few of the masterpieces in their collections in order to sell mugs and t-shirts. This sometimes results in the overlooking of similarly outstanding artworks which become more and more obscure to the general public....
THERE IT IS! / ¡AHÍ ESTÁ!
As I pedalled away cycling to my teaching job today, I sought consolation in the thought of how the initial frustration of not being able to go to the studio often evolves into an interesting exchange with my students that ends up in an experience we all benefit from. I pulled into the...
ONE WORD LANGUAGE
I’ve always been interested in conceiving painting as a language, a visual code for communicating something about external reality, ideas or feelings; and when I begin a new project I try to create a new code to work on it with. For my current project – the one based on the music by Olivier...
ON PAINTING
Two paintings from my project The Life and Times of Ernest Ka’ai will be on show as from tomorrow and until the 7th of July at the CAAM art centre in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, as part of the exhibition On Painting; an ambitious exhibition made up of works...
ARTIST STUDIO: HENRI MATISSE
Image: www.contentinacottage.blogspot.com _ What I love about this picture of Matisse in his studio/bedroom is the idea it gives of the magnitude of his immense creative drive. Old age, illness or convalescence were not enough, it appears, to stop Matisse from creating new work. _ Lo que me encanta de esta foto de Matisse en...
All schools should be art schools.
