Newsletter for the Friends of the New English Art Club ISSUE 22 April 2 015 the Summer Exhibition
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Newsletter for the Friends of the New English Art Club ISSUE 22 April 2 015 The Summer Exhibition rom 2015, early Summer means New English time. This year our annual Fexhibition moves its date from November/ December to sunny June. Submissions for the public send-in opened the day after our 2014 show closed in early December, so we hardly had time to draw breath before planning started in earnest for this year. As I write this, we have finished the first phase of selection and are looking forward to seeing members’ new work arrive in the gallery. When you receive this newsletter, you will also have our catalogue, which illustrates one work by each exhibiting member artist. Many more paintings may be seen online at www.neac.co.uk and may be purchased through the website. The exhibition opens to the public on Thursday 18th June, but as a Friend, you will have an opportunity to visit the show for the Private View on Wednesday 17th June. We also look forward to seeing many of you at our Friends’ and Members’ event ‘First Bite’ on the evening of Monday 15th June. We have more prizes than ever to award at this year’s show, and are particularly grateful to our prizegivers. TheRoboz prizeof £5,000 is in its second year, and the Doreen McIntosh Prize, also of £5,000 will again be awarded. ‘A Day Dream’ by June Berry This year sees the introduction of the £4,000 Haworth Prize for a young northern landscape I think this figure is a symbol for myself. I can spend a lot of time looking out of the window painter, and the shortlisted entries will be shown or day dreaming and thinking about paintings that are still in my head. The landscape in theexhibition alongsidethewinning painting. represents the views from my studio windows in the depths of rural France and the still life Details of all theprizesareto befound in the represents the flowers and special objects connected with the place where I have worked catalogue, and last year’s winners are listed on for several months of the year for over forty years. It is all very nostalgic! page 8 of this newsletter. Albany celebrates 50 years It’s always good to havean opportunity to artists including thelateKyffin Williams RA, for celebrate with friends, and this year sees a whom she was Welsh agent for the last 25 special celebration as Mary Yapp marks 50 years of his life. Amongst other artists, the show years since she established the Albany Gallery will feature new work by Diana Armfield, Ken in Cardiff. We are delighted that Mary has Howard, Peter Brown and Jane Corsellis. chosen to mark the occasion with an exhibition Works by Selected NEAC Artists runs from of paintings by about thirty of the current 10th September – 3rd October 2015 membership of the New English. As well as a Albany Gallery 74b Albany Road, Cardiff continuing relationship with the NEAC over the CF24 3RS Tel: 029 2048 7158 Peter Brown Between the hail showers, years, Mary has shown work by many notable www.albanygallery.com Pen y Lan Road, Cardiff 1 Letter from the President Richard Pikesley RWS PNEAC A wonderful gift to the NEAC fell through my letterbox a couple of weeks ago in the shape of a sepia photograph of thelast NEAC selection committee to be held at the old Egyptian Hall in 1904. It is a well-known image resonant of an era when a generation of painters came together to exhibit under the banner of the New English. Hands in pockets, Augustus John strikes a bohemian pose, rather at odds with someone’s top hat on the table in front of him. Seated on the table is William Rothenstein with Roger Fry sitting on a chair beside him. The other man in a hat is Muirhead Bone, who made a finedrawing of thedemolition of theEgyptian Hall, also in the possession of the New English. He in turn looks over the shoulder of Philip Wilson Steer. The space looks quite cramped, perhaps always the fate of selection committees, and thefloor behind thesimpletrestletableis strewn with litter. We don’t know the identities of the anonymous porters bringing in a procession of paintings, and there are no women. No top hats on displaybut although these images are separated by 111years, the similarities are striking. Members of the 2015 selection committee looked at about 1,000 works from the public submission to choose about 100 to hang alongside members’ paintings in this year’s exhibition. through simplicity of colour and form.Though anatomy, life and general drawing, graphic New Members someof my paintings aredonerelatively design, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics, quickly, most takea long timeand changea lot and all these disciplines had drawing as a James Bland in the process. They might be cut down, re- starting point with a sketch book being my stretched, scraped back or painted over. I also visual diary. I keep the Camberwell practice of My work incorporates diverse like the idea that a painting should tell a story. drawing every day so a sketch book is my approaches to style and subject Some influences include Piero della Francesca, constant companion. Drawing is thestart of my but always begins in drawing Fra Angelico, Paul Klee, Gwen John, Keith creative process, making me look and assess. and painting from life. My aim is Vaughan and Euan Uglow. Then composition and colour come into play, to find an image that resonates and hopefully, I end up with a work which has Nick Tidnam gonesomeway towards my original intentions. Drawing has been the connecting link from my early childhood right through to Art School; looking and drawing in order to understand shape, form, colour and texture. At school I was encouraged to look more widely at artists’ drawings and how they were used, so a big thank you to James Riddock, my art teacher. Every day at Camberwell there were stimulating James Bland Full Moon and challenging classes in architecture, Nick Tidnam Winter Landscape 2 www.neac.co.uk for drawing school events ISSUE 22 April 2015 The story behind the painting Member artists tell us about some of the paintings in the NEAC Annual Open Exhibition 2015 Melissa Scott Miller Pamela Kay Michael Fairclough Bloomsbury back gardens Two Tea Bowls of Primroses At Sea – Dusk I painted this from the bathroom window of my Every year I look forward to the first flowers of It was thelast of onesequenceof ninepaintings, friend Comfort’s flat in Percy Circus. spring and the early primroses. These delicate, part of several series which were provoked by a It was quitedifficult, I had to balancethe almost ghostly flowers are deceptively subtle to Channel crossing. Other series in a similar vein canvas on theedgeof thewashbasin, but I paint. “Much moredifficult than you think” John are ‘Sea Passage’ and Dog-Watch’, each wanted to get as much in as I could. The Ward oncesaid to me,and hewas right. Each developing the theme of the fading of light until childrenareComfort’s fivechildren, thelittleboy year, it is important to see them as if for the first thefinal ‘Dog-Watch’ paintings arevirtually on thebikeis actually 16 now, my son’s best time, and collecting a range of pots, jars and black and very simple – except that they are friend, but I painted him as I knew him when we bowls to put them in, gives a fresh set of ‘props’. actually deeply colourful and full of texture! first met, and as I remember the many lovely The two Chinese tea bowls are old friends that I children’s parties that happened in that garden. found, chipped and dusty in the shop at the The same cat appears three times in the Museum in Singapore, years ago. I recently painting, he always seemed to be there, returned to the Museum but it had been greatly through themonth it took to paint. enlarged from the old colonial building it used to be, and the shop, no longer a treasure house of local antiques, but an expensive boutique. Buy it when you see it is the best advice to any still life painter! Michael Fairclough At Sea, DuskIX Michael Whittlesea Melissa Scott Miller Bloomsbury BackGardens Winter Evening This garden is formal but a bit neglected, it Julian Bailey snowed lightly, everyone chose to go for a Windy Pier, Weymouth walk, but I stayed in the conservatory and The gouaches I do are painted in my studio, thought I would paint the view of the garden. usually based on pencil sketches that I make on Desperation took over as it got darker and the spot, out in the open. They are completed darker. I stopped being careful about the with many layers of paint, and constant Pamela Kay Two Tea Bowls of Primroses painting, for methat’s a good thing, and it was revisions, until things fall into place in a way becoming so dark, I couldn’t see how it was that I feel makes for a good resolution. Jenny Wheatley going. I thought, well, it's rather like a diary of Gouache is endlessly malleable, so long as you View of the Islands that afternoon, for better or worse. Everyone let the paint dry fully between layers, and the This painting was inspired by regular visits to the returned, so I stopped. (Difficult to describe the colour is an absolute joy to use. isles of Scilly and is a composite of drawings way I work, but uncertainty and not knowing that have come together to try to create the how it’s going to work, if at all, it’s what domestic French-inspired interior with the tranquil happened that day).