Category: Notes

I wanted this personal project to reflect where I am in my life right now as well as focusing on the subjects that I love to draw most of all and so as I find myself a newly single mother I decided to focus on that relationship between mother and child – one so often repeated throughout art history. Here are some of the images I looked to for inspiration.

Hilda, Unity and dolls. Oil on Canvas by Stanley Spencer, Leeds Art Gallery.

I love this image so much – everything about it, the busyness, the pattern of the dress, the solemn faces and the combination of human and dolls faces with all the different angles – the whole composition is gorgeous. It would be fun too to try to emulate this sort of style but using pastels.

Mother and Child. Oil on canvas by Harold Gilman, Auckland Art Gallery.

This again I just love. I’ve just stopped breastfeeding my daughter and it was such an amazing intimate thing that I really wanted to makes sure I documented it and so I had a friend take a whole bunch of photos of me feeding her specifically to use for reference for paintings and drawings – I’m really looking forward to having a go at that. This has all the things I look for in a painting – fantastic use of colours, lots of wonderful patterns and a window into someone’s life.

Mother with child in her arms. Etching by Kathe Kollwitz, Trustees of the British Museum.

Another beautiful example; this is full of joy, and the lines are so lovely and so soft in it – it feels like a very well captured moment of intimacy. It focuses on the mother and her adoration, the child’s face obscured by shadow but no less present for that – everything of that grip and closeness is so beautifully and accurately portrayed. Try similar with charcoals perhaps?

Virgin of Vladimir. Tempera on panel – unknown artist, Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi.

The biggest wealth of mother and child images of course are images of the Madonna and child. There are so many gorgeous depictions all over the world by all manner of known and forgotten artists – this is just one example but it is a lovely one. I do really like icon imagery – the flattening of the images and the simplified hands always give them such a specific feeling especially wit the wonderful rich gold leaf that they’re so often done in, it would be fun to play around with elements of these; they are so much a part of our cultural subconscious that even adding a little gold to a portrait of a mother and child would bring them immediately to the forefront.

It’s hard to know where to begin with self portraits because surely every artist spends hours practising on themselves and they are almost always fascinating! Here are a few self portraits I’d like to remember elements from for my future work.

At the dressing table – Zinaida Serebriakova. (Tretyakov gallery) 

I love this painting – mostly for it’s wonderful composition but also because she just exudes charm! Such a wonderful expression. I love the idea of including objects from ones life in this way, and glimpses into an interior.

Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

I love everything about this. His use of colour is fantastic, the patterned wallpaper behind is exactly my cup of tea and the portrait pinned to the wall behind is a lovely element too. I like also knowing it’s backstory and so when I see it I see that tumultuous relationship with Vincent Van Gogh but specifically the beginning of their artistic relationship and the hope they both had for what would follow.

Egon Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait, Squatting, 1916. Pencil and gouache on packing paper. 29.5 x 45.8 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.

Egon Schiele again – I just love how unflattering and prima his paintings are – particularly as self portraits. The idea of squatting naked for a self portrait is so at odds with today’s selfie culture – I don’t think my self portraits are usually flattering but this would be taking it to another level!

Kathe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait with Hand on the Forehead (Selbstbildnis mit der Hand an der Stirn) The Met Museum

This is lovely both because of it’s simple moody technique and because of the hand – it’s such a classic drawing pose and adds so much to the image having that hand included. It makes me wonder why all my self portraits don’t include a hand!

I’ve been looking for paintings that show the human figure in a way that inspires me and researching how the body has been portrayed over the years. In the RA’s article Strike a pose: 250 years of drawing at the Royal Academy Annette Wickham looks at the progression from early traditions of drawing an idealised form to todays celebration of the quirks and flaws in the human form. Generally I find myself more drawn to the more modern and more seemingly truthful depictions that but some early works are just superb – I’ve included a mix here.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, Uffizi.

I love this, it’s such a gorgeous sensual picture with the directness of her gaze and the composition with such symbolism in the different elements of the painting. There’s something too about having both nude and clothed people in one image that makes the nudity seem exaggerated or slightly improper

Sandro Botticelli, Primavera. Tempera grassa on wood, Uffizi.

I’ve always loved this, and particularly the figure of Flora – due in no small part to me being a Flora too – but she is just so striking in this with her contented expression, crown of flowers and fantastic ripe figure. She is clothed but painted in such a way that she may as well be naked – it’s a false modesty when every line of the figure is so clearly seen through the cloth. I do love these images based on myths and legends where a whole story is laid out in a picture.

David Jones, Illustration to the Arthurian Legend: Guenever. Graphite, ink and Watercolour, Tate Gallery.

Here’s another image telling a story – there is so much going on here and I love how busy it is, the focal point of the nude standing out as a lighter calmer area of the image. The body is beautifully and playfully drawn; it’s so simple and in some ways naïve but it’s also brilliantly drawn.

Lucian Freud, Standing by the Rags. Oil on canvas, Tate Gallery.

Lucien Freud is so fantastic when it comes to flesh. He’s a great example of the more modern approach of celebrating warts and all and this is a particularly nice composition with the repeated folds of rags and flesh piled high.

Amadeo Modigliani, Nude. Oil on canvas, Guggenheim museum.

Modigliani is a pretty far cry from Freud – his nudes are so simplified and stylised – it’s all smoothed down to perfection but I love them all the same.

Duncan Grant, Venus and Adonis. Oil on Canvas, Tate.

Another Venus and I love way this body has been pulled and contorted into completely unnatural and impossible positioning but still has an authenticity about it’s curves. A good reminder that you don’t have to stick to the truth.

Duncan Grant, The bathers. Tate.

This is another of Duncan Grant’s – a totally different style of work but with that same contortion – somewhere between gorgeous and grotesque. I love the use of pattern and the flattened 2D feel of this too.

Pablo Picasso, Nude woman in a Red Armchair. Tate.

Picasso has to feature – again showing that you do not have to stick to realism to create a wonderful and instantly recognisable picture. I feel all the more keen on Picasso since going to exhibition last year and seeing the impact his paintings had in the flesh (so to speak) – there’s something quite magic about them.

Egon Schiele, Self portrait in crouching position. Tate.

Egon Schiele has been my favourite artist since I was a teen, his paintings are so grotesque and so so beautiful, I’d love to try to bring something of his style into my work. his marks seem so quick and careless but are always exactly right and like Freud he seems to celebrate the flaws – almost going beyond finding the beauty in them to exaggerate the ugliness in them.

Vija Celmins is not an artist I’d heard of and as a rule I really don’t like photorealistic work so I was surprised by how much I did like her work. I think what makes her work successful is isolating very specific things so that often you are left with just texture or just pattern but still very recognisably the subject. Her work is so far from my style of working but that could make her an interesting influence to have in mind as I go about the next exercises.

As with still life landscape never used to inspire me particularly, or rather I would enjoy other peoples work but it never really excited me in the same way that portraiture of life drawings would and certainly I never felt much temptation to do any myself. All of my previous attempts at landscape have left me incredibly frustrated at my complete inability to translate something so lovely on to paper, but I’ve looked forward to being forced to address that! It’s good to have an opportunity to research other peoples work to see what it is that does inspire me.

I looked first as suggested at the work of Albrecht Durer – I found his watercolours oddly emotive. Something of their simplicity coupled with the age of them makes you feel that you are getting a true view in to another time that is otherwise completely lost. Often older paintings feel heavy with the hang-ups of their time – they need to be to a certain level or showing a particular kind of image and I don’t fee; that at all with these, it’s more like a snapshot image of how it looked. (See View of Nuremberg for reference.)

I looked next at Claude Lorrain’s designed landscapes – the polar opposite! These are incredibly beautiful and so full of drama, just the trees themselves seem regal and lifted out of the ordinary into something quite different. However the image I loved most was one of his sketches Landscape with Bridge which doesn’t have anything of that precision and premeditation to it  – it’s just a beautifully done quick work more reminiscent of Edward Ardizonne.

I don’t think you can research Landscape without mentioning John Constable. His paintings have been so overused that it can be hard to see them for what they are but he was an extremely competent painter. Again these have that idealised rather too perfect look that does very little for me but his sketches (Such as Sketch of a Lane at East Bergholt) show how easily he captured light and colour.

L.S. Lowry as a rule I really do not like. There are aspects of his work that are interesting but I find the cartoonish people completely off putting. I can see he did something interesting by showing landscapes that up until then had been uncelebrated but it isn’t enough for me to be able to see past the people, I find them slightly grotesque – although perhaps they are meat to be.

Stanley Spencer in contrast really does do it for me! His garden and local landscape paintings are much more detailed and realistic than my usual taste I think but he does it beautifully and there is so much to look at! He often gives a lot more focus on the foreground than some landscape artists too which could be interesting to have a go at. My parents recently moved out of the old farm house that I grew up in – that would have been a perfect subject for this type of work, I might have a go from photographs – not at all the same but still useful practice.

Rickett’s farm, Cookham Dene – Tate.

Paul Nash is another artist that’s really exciting for me. Regretfully I missed his recent exhibition at the Tate and I heard such brilliant things about it, but I’ve done a fair bit of looking at his work since. His more surreal approach involving unlikely objects in the landscapes could be really interesting to play around with. Often he places something right at the foreground – whether it’s an object or selected plants – it is very obviously staged but in a really pleasing way. One of his most famous pieces Landscape of the Summer Solstice is a good example, it shows too his lovely use of very toned down colour which again I’d like to have a go at.

I came across Charles Mahoney’s Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden recently and really loved it, again bringing fiction in but in a really fantastic and beautiful way. Adding figures to the landscape changes it completely too – I’m not sure I’m confident enough for that yet but I think that mix is something I’d really enjoy. As well as complete fantasy such as this he did a lot of really wonderful landscapes of daily life – brick fields or a school house – again that’s something I could look at.

 Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Charles Mahoney – Tate

From a drawing point of view his study for Adam and Eve is interesting too – lovely use of ink and wash which is my current favourite media.

Study for Adam and Eve, Charles Mahoney – Tate

One of my absolute favourite contemporary artists is Paul Jackson, he does beautiful landscapes oil that are both intricate and very simple and he exhibits regularly in Sussex but he also does a lot of collage which he doesn’t generally sell but that I also love. I find these particularly inspiring as a different approach and way of almost painting with paper. This unnamed collage is from his Shipping Forecast collection on his Flickr account and is particularly impressive as a way of capturing clouds.

Shipping forecast, Paul Jackson – Flickr

I hadn’t come across George Shaw before and found his work really interesting. I can’t work out if I like it or not. There’s something I find a bit gross about photorealistic painting but I do like his choice of subjects – he has a real photographer’s eye for beauty in unlikely places, I’d like to see his photographs! I’ll never be a photorealistic painter but I would like to try more subjects of this type and living in Tottenham there’s no shortage of them!

Sarah Woodfine is another new artist for me and although I really like her approach I don’t generally like her work, it’s a little cartoonish for me though I think too that it would probably have more impact seen in the flesh. It has made me want to try using paper for a 3D landscape though – perhaps just cut paper or collage, or possibly trying to create layers of different texture with fineliner. Something to come back to.

Two Trees (charcoal on paper) c. 1875 by Odilon Redon was a useful reminder to me of the true potential of Charcoal as well as of how far I have to go; while I’ve been really enjoying the medium and producing better work that I like more and more none of it has the subtlety or atmosphere that is visible here. Redon takes a very mundane subject and makes it almost abstract in it’s broad strokes and shapes but retains such fine detail at closer inspection, the tonal contrasts give great depth to the image and it’s these large areas of dark and light that make it so atmospheric. I looked too at A Knight, c.1885, which has that same fantastic atmosphere as Two Trees and a dream-like quality that so many of his works have. I like particularly those images like this one that carry that dream-like quality without losing any of the vivid believable style – so that the image could almost have been drawn from life but for the element of fantasy.

Looking at other work of his in different medium you see that the fantasy element is present across the board and that those great swathes of tone present in his charcoals translate to large plains of colour in other works giving quite a different feeling. I love The Crown, 1910 (pastel and charcoal), for it’s simplicity and emotion giving it an entirely different type of charm. It is for me an example of how pastel can be used effectively – a medium I’m not generally so keen on. Another particularly fantastical work Lumiere, 1893 (litho) sees again that vivid contrast and great areas of light and dark and once again the atmosphere is so successfully achieved even in this much less realistic style.

I’d like to try to experiment with richer contrast and larger areas of tone in my own work and see if it has that same atmospheric affect, I’m not sure how my style of drawing will hold it, it could be that I need to try to shake off my style to really give it the best chance of working. I’m particularly interested in how the finer details are maintained when working with such strong tone, that isn’t something I’ve achieved in my work so far and it would be great to work towards that.