Peter Jon Fowler

Painter

Etching my heritage

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I produced another plate in my two days. The image was in mind before I arrived.

A few days previously, using up unused paint in doodles at the end of the day, I produced this:

Accidental may be but, to my Novocastrian eyes, clearly an unconscious abstract of the view downriver of the six bridges over the River Tyne at Newcastle. So I made some sketches of the idea, including a painting:

 

Then I made a detailed drawing from a photograph I had taken last year from the train, to ensure that I had the six bridges in the correct visual order i.e. which was in front of which viewed from the west.

From that I selected the horizontal, vertical and curving lines which made a good composition and yet showed something of each bridge in the correct visual sequence.

 

 

 

To keep it simple, at this stage I dropped the railway bridge I was, as it were, standing on and the Metro bridge immediately in front of it. I then traced the semi-abstracted four bridges:

and, turning the tracing paper round through 180 degrees, drew the mirror image direct on to the plate so that the final image would come out the right way round; which it did:

Not the world’s greatest print, perhaps, and the weaknesses are not obliterated by a little colour, though it makes it easier on the eye:

If I go back to Sudbourne, clutching my precious zinc plate of the Tyne Bridges, I’d like to have the chance to clean up the image and strengthen some of its lines to give the etching a bit of artistic character. It obviously lost its engineering credibility some stages back!

Factually, the view is from the west, looking downriver at, in correct visual sequence, Armstrong’s Swing Bridge, The High Level Bridge (railway on top, road below), the Tyne Bridge, and the Millennium Bridge (‘the Blinking Eye’). The last, a walkway, effectively prevented vessels of any size passing under the Tyne Bridge.

 

Etching – in two days

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I went to a two-day etching course at Sudbourne Printers last week, curious of mind and also wondering if I could widen my technical repertoire. I learnt that I could, but the question is whether I am prepared to make the quite large investment of time and effort required to become at all competent. Overall the experience was always interesting and quite challenging, and I came away with two beautifully wrapped zinc plates. The trouble is I am not sure how I produced them or, more accurately, I’m with Eric Morecambe in remembering the ‘notes’ but not necessarily in the right order.

To keep things graphically simple I based a quick sketch on a large ‘Avebury stones’ painting of mine hanging in my study:

A zinc plate was cut to my size specifications, I painted the design on to the plate which was then, among other processes, put in an acid bath and eventually inked and pressed to produce:

The design fragmented due to a misunderstanding with the tutor when removing a layer of something from the plate, but the result was not unpleasing so we lived with it and re-inked adding yellow ochre:

The plate was then trimmed to remove the thumb-print and the clutter down the left side, and colour was added for the next prints:

 

 

We wondered if the same image might not look better this way:

 

Highlights from three other exhibitions

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  An unexpected bonus at the Houghton Moore exhibition (see two posts back) was a small but high quality exhibition of paintings in the stables. Don’t wince: these are not any old stables but high quality stables, doubtless for high quality racing and hunting horses. The stables’ preservation is excellent, and one of the admirable characteristics of this art exhibition is that the display, curated by Norfolk by Design, makes not a mark on the integrity of the architecture or its fittings.

I select just three paintings by two artists. Will Cutts’ painting above is called ‘Blaxhall, Suffolk, after rain’ and seemed to me an interesting way of treating an unremarkable landscape in ink and gouache on paper. I also liked its local interest, for Blaxhall is the next village to Snape to the west. The next painting, also by Cutts, is also of local interest: called ‘Towards Iken’ (2019)’ it is a treatment in oil on canvas of a view towards the next village to the east.

To me, often bothered about how to show hedges, bushes and trees, I found these two treatments helpful both in using a track centrally and disappearing into the mid-distance, and in making the ordinary worth a second look.

 

 

 

 

My third choice is by Philip Jones (1937-2008), ‘Grove Lagoon Study’, an oil on canvas work of 2002:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhat more enigmatic and exotic than the Cutts’ works, it nevertheless treats of the unremarkable with simplicity and a restricted palette.

Now for something completely different: two works from a major exhibition of an artist unknown to me. The exhibition was in Aldeburgh during the Aldeburgh Festival; the artist was John Keane, an official war artist in Iraq 20 years ago who has subsequently travelled the world painting before, during and after wars. This first painting, in oil on linen and priced at a cool £70,000, is called ‘Bound’ (2015). 200 x 200 cm in size, it is a remarkable painting which the photograph fails to bring out, though the symbolism is clear.

Equally remarkable is my second choice of a Keane:

This is called ‘Fear Not’ (2013) and, at 200 x 280 cm is even larger. Made of oil, gold leaf and inkjet transfer on jute, it is inspired by the Pussy Riot feminist punk rock protest group and their treatment by the Russian authorities. If you Google ‘Pussy Riot’, as I have, you will understand where the image comes from. Anyway, it is (was?) yours for only £50,000.

I feel quite exhausted after that so I’m going to end now with something completely different:

 

This was the scene the other day when I went to the RA’s Summer Exhibition and, also feeling similarly then, turned tail and fled at the sight of the crowded rooms and serried ranks of ART all over the place. I’ll go back and ‘do’ it properly when it is less crowded and I’m feeling stronger.

Filed Under: Art

Exhibitions galore: (ii) Paintings and other images

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Well, it’s not a painting but is it a sculpture? – ‘Path’ is a structure of common reed and various natural yarns by Monica Cass and Lizzie Kimbley. Here, it’s my link between ‘Exhibitions galore’ (i) and (ii). Somewhat unobtrusively, it sits outside the south door of St Margaret’s Church, Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, as one of the exhibits in the annual Cley Contemporary Art exhibition. I’ve been going to this event and its predecessor at Salthouse for over a decade. I thought this, called ‘Borderlines’, one of its most successful occasions, with exhibits spread around the graveyard as well as in the Church and, a mile away, in the Norfolk Wildlife Trust Visitor Centre until 4 August.

On the outside of the chancel’s north wall are three photographs on canvas by Simon Marshall; along the northern edge of the graveyard are three panels (mixed media) entitled ‘Perspectives’ by Jake Francis, one of several items overtly with a political message in the exhibition.

 

 

One of the most dramatic sights is looking into the Church from outside the west door:

Here Alan Cossins’ ‘Armistice’ fills the porch with bamboo, waxed cotton and paper while allowing a view through to the east window of the chancel (see below). Paper triangles carry dates and names of wars and battles, with numbers of the dead e.g.

The message is clear. As is that of the startling fabric hanging between the east window and the altar cross:

The title of this installation, ‘The Essence of Everything’ by Kelly Briggs, is somehow both meaningless and apt. Below and in front of it is  ‘Erebus and Nyx’ by Rachel Kurdynowska, a book simulation in ‘Wild Norfolk clay, silk, cotton, natural dyes’, with a sound piece (not illustrable).

Among the spaciousness of the nave, carefully curated in this exhibition, one unusual item in particular caught my eye:

Chalk writing on the nave floor is a mixture, as far as I could read, of real script and scribble-scribble. It is called ‘Return’ by Kristy Campbell.

Am going to cut there – this note is long enough; but there’s more to come from this summer’s exhibitions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Art

Exhibitions galore: (i) sculpture

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I’ve seen dozens of, nay hundreds if not several thousand, works of art in recent weeks at numerous exhibitions. Let’s deal with some sculpture first.

Stanny Farm, on a bend in the R.Alde opposite Aldeburgh, Suffolk, from time to time hosts rather up-market art exhibitions for invitees with supposedly up-market pockets. The exhibitions’ setting is unambiguously striking in a classic example of what to do with a large, redundant agricultural building, in this case a very spacious barn. The two photographs give some idea of the vast space available. The sculptures, mainly re-used bits of iron and other metals mainly welded into suggestively anthropomorphic shapes, are by Andrew Sloan in an exhibition entitled ‘The Nine Muses’ (open to view by appointment).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On an even (much) grander scale is this summer’s Henry Moore exhibition, Nature and Inspiration, at Houghton Hall in north west Norfolk, open into the autumn.

 

Most striking, I thought, is Large Reclining Figure 1984 stretched out in all its fibreglass curvaceousness on the lawn in front of the west (rear) front of the Hall. The first view (right) is from the far end of the avenue flanking this lawn; the second view (below) is from the central, ground level doorway looking, like the sculpture, west down that avenue.

 

 

 

The counterpart sculpture outside the centre of the east (front) front of the Hall, also looking down an avenue, is the bronze Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae 1968-69. This view is back towards the house from the east, showing the tripartite nature of the sculpture. What a setting for two mighty, and mightily impressive, works; though it has to be said that the architecture stands up well to the visual challenge.

Further out in the grounds to the west, the park-scape is dotted with sculpture, some by Moore and some now resident here from earlier exhibitions, for example by Long, Turrell and Whiteread.

The Arch 1963-69 (below left) stands fibre-glass tall at the centre of a geometrical plantation (with avenues of course):

                          

The bronze Mother and Child: Block Seat 1983-84 (above right) sits similarly at the junction of avenues in another plantation on the south of the western avenue.

Indoors are various smaller works. Personally I thought the state rooms with their rows of stately portraits looked better when hung with Damien Hirst’s dot compositions last year. The outstanding Moore-related piece tells of his inspiration rather than his accomplishment: it is the splendid elephant skull that was, to a degree, his muse:

If I’m honest, the best part of the visit was to enter once again the wonderful large walled garden, immaculate as ever and annually more coveted by this increasingly ex-gardener. As for the Moore exhibition, I was glad to find I was still impressed even though in one sense, I suppose because I have grown up and lived with the Moore genre of sculpture for more than half a century, these mighty works were strangely familiar, little lambs rather than mighty elephants.

That could not be said of the last stop in this quick gallop round some sculpture exhibitions. Look at this:

      

This extraordinary sculpture by Thomas Houseago is called ‘Beautiful Boy’; it is in ‘tuf-cal, hemp and iron rebar’, which perhaps someone can translate for me. Context is all; and yes, it’s the RA’s Summer Exhibition once again, announced by (the statue of) a garlanded Sir Joshua Reynolds on the main promo-poster and just below the crotch of the ‘Beautiful Boy’ in this photograph (no suggestiveness intended though I admit the angle of the photograph was not accidental).

For me, far and away the most interesting part of the Exhibition (see next blog for indoors) is the Courtyard installation, here in its own words:

 

For once, I agree very much with the official blurb, so need add very little. The whole Houseago assemblage in the Annenberg Courtyard is fearsome as well as fearless, and indeed in some respects a little sinister, even scary:

Look at the owl-like figure to the left and other anthropomorphic figures in the background. In the foreground, and dominating the Courtyard, is Large Walking Figure I (Leeds), a monstrous bronze which I have exploited with a low angle photograph so that the sky is background to the empty, ghoul-like eye-sockets and nasal passages. It was my conceit to angle it so that it looks as if a Union Jack is coming out of his left ear: a slight cheat may be, but there is plenty of other political undertone in this splendid show. This is my sort of sculpture, powerful and pertinent – and very lookable at. You can look at it for free until 12th August.

In utter contrast is this very ‘soft’ art-work of reeds and yarns, perhaps making a sculpture. It is called ‘Path’. Its context is in the next post:

 

Filed Under: Art

Some new paintings

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I recently went to Norfolk for my annual session working in Michael Horn’s studio; but I had lost my mojo, painted like a drain and left early, the first time the magic of Michael and his studio has not worked. I wont even show here my working studies from there.

Nevertheless, I returned to my own studio strangely invigorated and have been putting in the hours painting again. Here are four paintings recently worked on; none is yet finished.

The first is a brand new abstract, a landscape I think, but all depends on which way you look at it. One viewer in the studio said it reminded him of the coloured pieces in a stained-glass window. We’ll see how it now develops:

 

The second is figurative, an ‘ice-scape’, based on one of Barbara Rae’s photographs from her recent forays to the Arctic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have never seen an iceberg, which perhaps contributes to the current botch-up of the thing on the left. But I have meanwhile been to see the Rae exhibition in London and am inspired (see blog of 21st July).

 

 

Then we have a couple of megalithic paintings. The first is figurative, based on a photograph of Callanish stone circles on Lewis in the Hebrides (been there). Since posting it, and after much thought and discussion with others over more than a week, I have decided that, for better or worse, it is in fact finished.

 

 

The second in contrast is entirely imaginary, a collage assembled around the ideas of the lintel as seen at Stonehenge, and the hexagonal standing stone as seen at Avebury:

But I now wonder whether it is best to forget all that and view the image laid at right angles to its left:

Viewed that way, and forgetting its megalithic origins, it becomes more a challenge in abstract composition. Perhaps it could benefit from a little colour?: let’s see how it goes.

It will be interesting, at least to me, to see how, if at all, these develop; but at least I’m painting again.

 

Revised text and design 20 July 2019

Filed Under: Art

Faroese Fields: ancient, modern and natural?

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Out of personal curiosity I was interested to see what sorts of fields existed in the Faroe Islands. Most of the landscape proved to be unenclosed pasture, grazed by countless sheep. Fenced, and in some cased walled, fields were in use around farms and villages; some of these were derelict and ignored by the sheep.

In several places I noted what appeared to be lynchets, that is horizontal, linear scarps on slopes. Most were small, forming areas of ‘crinkly’ surface which were certainly terracettes, that is geomorphological scarps formed naturally on often steep slopes as the soil under its grass cover moved gradually downhill to the foot of the steep slope on the other side of a valley under the influence of gravity and water. Such are exemplified here in a view looking down one steep slope, grazed by a sheep, across a narrow inlet to the lower slope of the steep valley side opposite:

But the view also clearly suggests that parts of the terracette area have been smoothed over (cultivated?), apparently to create small lynchetted rectangular fields. That such are defined by lynchets suggests the enclosed areas were ploughed; that this might have been some time ago is suggested by the apparent mini-terrracettes which are forming on the fields.

Immediately adjacent on the same slope opposite a larger, cleared area appears to contain three or four larger fields, divided on the right by ditches and on the left by slight banks or lynchets creating long narrow strips lying up and down the slope.  The whole is well-drained. The upper edge is defined by a terraced track and a wall, exactly as along the upper edge of the in-bye land around valley-bottom farms in the English Lake District.

 

When flying out of Faroe’s international airport on Vagar in brilliant sunshine, I noted what appeared to be flights of ‘strip lynchets’ along the western edge of one of the other islands. I cannot be absolutely sure of the location but it was on either Sandoy or Suduroy, probably the latter.

Obviously, I have not inspected these features on the ground, nor have I yet researched whatever knowledge there might be about pre-modern agricultural history on the Faroes. I just noted en passant a reference to the collection of seaweed to manure the land, presumably cultivated, so perhaps a field of genuine enquiry awaits its landscape archaeologist here, exemplified by these two air photographs:

 

 

Nolsoy

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Nolsoy is an island about 20 minutes by ferry east of Torshavn. It is renowned as the island time forgot, for there is little development, though most of the houses are modern, and almost no traffic. One or two vehicles are used to haul stuff to and from the ferry, but what is the point of car when there is less than a mile of road? There is one small village: here is the main part of it as viewed from the ferry, showing the cluster around the church (locked needless to say), perched immediately above the sea.

East of the church is the harbour, essentially boats pulled up on to the sandy beach inside a protective stone pier, with the modern docking facility for the vehicle-carrying ferry a little further round still. Between the two is a picturesque curve of derelict and semi-redundant warehouses. The photo shows the ferry leaving its quay and heading for open water past the church and old pier.

 

The rest of the island is uninhabited and given over to sheep and visiting walkers. This photo shows the island behind the village to the north.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above the ferry quay is a small rocky hill with a collection of ruinous buildings. None, as far as I could see, were domestic; rather were they outbuildings, sheds and the like. The best guidebook asserts they represent desertion of part of the village in the 17th century. This may be so but some of the ruins are certainly recent judging by the concrete blocks etc. among the debris and the state of surviving wood.

 

The Faroes: notes on insular landscape

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The islands consist very much of a series of spectacular landscapes containing mountains, steep slopes, cascading waterfalls, fiords – and no trees. Sheep graze everywhere on the lower slopes and present, as we were warned and duly found out, the most serious hazard to motorists. Otherwise, driving is a sheer joy on a modern road system with little traffic on well-maintained roads which, confronted by a mountain, go through it, and by a fiord, go under it. Usage of kilometres of tunnel is electronically logged and billed later. Most of the landscape is uninhabited; villages,  hamlets and farms, characteristically widely spaced, hug the valley bottoms, favourable shore-lines and road-sides. White-walled, green turf-roofed churches punctuate the landscape.

Here is a small selection of meaningful views:

above: Sheep ruminating characteristically on a steep slope down to the sea

below: Saksun (built 1858), a typical small church (typically locked) in an awesome landscape of heavily eroded mountain-side and waterfall

above: the now abandoned ‘old’ farm of Duvugardar, not far upslope of Saksun church, is maintained as an open air museum/heritage attraction (though  it was closed when we visited, like the similar traditional farm maintained by the National Museum near Torshavn). Its modern successor lies alongside (carefully excluded from my photograph!). The old farm is anonymously famous as the location of the brilliant TV advertisement in which a shepherd shears not a sheep but his dog because he didn’t go to Specsavers.

ADDITION: a reader advises that while the Specsaver advert was certainly shot in the Saksun area, it may not have been at this ‘heritage’ farm. I will check further.

Buildings ancient and modern: first, ancient:

On an archipelago where practically everything was built of wood, two of the oldest buildings survive at Kirkjubour because they are of stone. In the foreground right are the ruins of St Magnus Cathedral, otherwise known as Muren, completed c1340 and partly dismantled when the diocese was abolished  c1560. It was the centre of an episcopal palace immediately beyond it in this view, of which only fragments survive. The King’s farmhouse, supposedly 11th century and the oldest inhabited timber house in Europe, was built on probable palatial foundations after it was allegedly floated in bits across from Norway and re-assembled here.

In the background, centre, perched immediately above the sea, is St Olav’s church, built in the early 12th century and still in use (but locked, despite the best guidebook assuring us that it ‘is never locked’!). It has been extensively rebuilt, and is clearly under threat from the sea.

And to complete this brief note, in contrast to the old, we visited Nordragota on Eysturoy to look at a very modern building designed by Henning Larsen to house the local council offices. Nothing unusual about that except that these offices lie within a footbridge over a river a short distance from its mouth into the sea:

 

I have two more posts about the Faroes to put up idc.

More than a place-name in a shipping forecast

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The Faroe Islands are the latest, and perhaps the last, of the northern European islands to be visited during a very conscious personal quest over many years. Weighed down with information about the weather there, we went in May with scarves, gloves and wet weather garb; apart from a little rain and fog on day 2, we enjoyed unbroken sunshine, cloudless blue skies and light breezes. We gathered we were just extraordinarily lucky, but we prefer to think the Faroes have a wonderful climate.

The National Art Gallery in Torshavn has already been noted (two posts back). Torshavn is the capital, a small but typical north European city around the head of a bay, now a port visited by much commercial shipping and cruise-ships. It is the base for a fishing industry and ferries to some islands in the Faroese archipelago – and to Denmark, to which the Faroes belong.

The photograph shows Torshavn from the sea to its east. The red building on the right marks the end of the historic town centre filling every bit of space on a narrow peninsula jutting into the bay. Called by its traditional name, Tinganes, this historic area is carefully curated in terms of its turf-roofed, timber and white-washed stone buildings while continuing to be both residential, a work-place and the seat of government (cf. the ‘Thing’, the early seat of government, in both Iceland and the Isle of Man). We had it almost to ourselves and it looked immaculate in the morning drizzle when we walked round all of it. informed by an elegant, transparent information panel:

That saves me a lot of explanation! The text is overprinted on part of the town plan, outlining some of the buildings in the next few photographs:

 

 

 

This illustrates one of the ‘property marks’ referred to above. It was in the centre of the gable of a single storey house, one which presumably belonged in the 17th century to F.V. Gabel. When I photographed it I thought it was a date-stone of 1659 but I see now that the 9 goes with a 3 in a font and incision quite distinct from the crown, the 165, the open circle (or C) around the 5 and the name below. In other words, I don’t know how to read this inscription; perhaps someone can enlighten me.

ADDITION: and a reader duly enlightens me. This inscription dates to 1693 in the reign of King Christian V – all perfectly obvious once you know how to read it! Mr Gabel, about whom I have conflicting stories, still has to be elucidated but he probably is a member of the von Gabel family who ruled the Faroes in the second half of the 17th century. Thank you, reader.

I’ll now turn to the wider landscape in a separate blog.