The sport of golf has inspired many famous paintings. Perhaps the most well known is "The Golfers" by Charles Lees. Lees was a Scottish portrait painter who turned later in his life to sporting and recreational paintings, notably golf and curling. This painting depicts the foursomes match between Sir David Baird and his partner Sir Ralph Anstruther against Major Hugh Lyon Playfair and John Campbell esq. which took place during the Royal and Ancient Autumn Meeting in 1844. The setting is apparently the 13th or `Ginger Beer` hole on the Old Course at St Andrews. Copies of this work hang in many different golf clubhouses but the original is owned by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It was the fashion in those days to include the likenesses of many of the `great and good` in sweeping canvas compositions. No doubt whoever commissioned this work prescribed to the artist a clear list of those people whom they wished to be featured? As a portraitist it must have been natural for Lees to combine this approach with the landscape setting. My own favourite golf painting hangs in the dining room of the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse in St Andrews. Entitled `Rainy Day` it depicts a group of spectators huddled under umbrellas in squally weather on what looks like one of the outward holes of the Old Course. A player addresses his ball as the rain sweeps in and a clearing in the sky illuminates the horizon against which the silhouette of the town can be seen.
It is a marvellously atmospheric composition painted in earth tones and greys and blacks. Anyone who has played golf in those conditions will immediately empathise - though as it is hanging in the dining room it can be surveyed whilst basking in the comforting glow of a glass of fine wine. As a keen golfer I have been meaning to do a golf painting for a while now. I finally got the opportunity when a good friend sent me a photograph of him at Muirfield; this ended up as a 50th birthday present to him from his wife. Landscapes are a new thing for me and I found the links grass a bit of a challenge to capture. I rather cheekily included in the foreground myself and a mutual golfing friend - thats us watching him hit his tee shot. Anyway, the gentleman appears happy with it, and I am planning to do more golf themed paintings soon.
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Dear Reader, if you have ever wanted to paint but didn`t know where or how to start, fret not. Salvation is at hand. You are but a few clicks away from enfranchising the creative part of your cerebellum. As a self-taught artist I have spent a fair amount of time surfing the web magpie-like attempting to lift useful snippets of advice about how to paint. As you might expect there is no shortage of stuff out there. Youtube in particular has an abundance of video footage. Alas, much of it is dross. The few obviously accomplished artists are unwilling to open up sufficiently to unlock their `secrets`, are inarticulate or are simply let down by poor production values. The old adage "Those who can, do. Those who can`t, teach" comes to mind. As is often the case with adages, happily there are some exceptions. One in particular worth checking out is Will Kemp and his art school. Will is a seriously gifted painter, classically trained and clearly more than good enough to make a decent living by painting, exhibiting and selling. It is our good fortune that he has also chosen to share his hard-won artistic expertise via his virtual art school. http://willkempartschool.com/ Here you can find a series of informative, downloadable (some of them free, others very good value) video lessons on drawing, acrylics, oils, colour, and many other key aspects. The quality of the footage is high, so that you can see each brushstroke, follow each step as the painting takes shape on the canvas. There is also a wealth of information on the practical aspects of setting up as a painter - those things that you need but nobody ever told you about properly: what mediums to use when, how to prepare a canvas, what brushes to use for what task, how to use colour, what kind of paints to buy etc etc. Even a very informative piece on what kind of lighting to use in your studio. Will avoids pontification or the patronising tone you so often come across. He is disarming, articulate, wise, kind, inspirational. One of the first of his courses I signed up for was "How to paint a portrait in oils" http://willkempartschool.com/how-to-paint-a-portrait-in-oils-time-lapse-video/ It was fascinating to follow the progress of this seemingly simple self-portrait. How paint can somehow impart `soul`, or at least a different kind of `truth` compared to the implacable cold focus of a photograph. As Philip Larkin said "But o, photography! As no art is/Faithful and disappointing". You can learn a lot about tone, light and shade and contrast by painting in black and white and I was happy with the improvements I felt this course had made in my own work. The painting below was a direct result of following Will`s advice. So I would just like to say a big thank you to Will for his wonderful tutorials, and encourage any of you who would like to improve on and/or begin their painting odyssey to check him out forthwith.
Woody Allen`s character in Annie Hall wittily adapted the adage, saying "Those who can`t do, teach. And those who can`t teach, teach gym". I`m delighted to say that Will Kemp (a) is not a gym instructor and (b) that he absolutely CAN do. A week ago my `always dodgy` right shoulder decided to pack up on me on the golf course. Turns out it is calcific tendonitis. On the supraspinatus tendon. In simple terms this meant a lot of pain and inability to use my right (painting) arm, not to mention swing a golf club! After a day or so of feeling sorry for myself - and under the comforting balm of prescription painkillers - I figured that there must be some form of art I could manage. Something that I could do with my left hand and with minimum use of my right, which was flapping uselessly by my side like Olivier`s Richard 111 or a crow on a bad day. Something that would avoid subtle brushstrokes. Something that could be accomplished with solid blocks of colour and a profusion of straight ruled black lines. Patrick Caulfield came to mind. I saw his retrospective exhibition at the Tate Britain last year. I was not familiar with his work but the purity of the lines and the simplicity of the blocks of colour left a deep impression. I was fascinated by the way that in some works he inserted a photorealist treatment into the otherwise pristine dreamlike whole, for example in this work above. This is a style I am going to use for a new commission back in the UK, for which I have to thank my new art buddy Jon Sharples (but more of that later). I decided to experiment with this kind of style whilst waiting for my shoulder/arm to get better. The inspiration came from a visit to The Tokyo National Art Center, a magnificent building opened in 2007 in Roppongi and designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa. Apart from housing a great permanent collection it also regularly showcases Japanese artists as well as many visiting exhibitions. From the outside, the building`s facade undulates in great 4 storey steel and glass waves. Enter into the cool interior and a vast open atrium into which two huge circular free standing structures (resembling giant concrete flower pots) have been deposited. The smaller of these sports a cafe, the larger/higher a rather posh Paul Bocuse eatery. The Japanese do these things so well. The view I chose for my Caulfield-style canvas manages to shoehorn - with judicious use of perspective - both of these into the frame. I used a large old canvas with a defunct painting on it and after 5 or 6 coats of gesso I was ready to go. The finished product took very little time to complete. The basic composition was hand drawn from a photograph, the medium used acrylic paint with black felt tip for the lines. Not easy to get a smooth consistent flow with a brush and this paint. Now I can see why Caulfield used gloss decorating paint, and latterly printing techniques to achieve the purity of colour. Anyway, it kept me busy for a day or two, and as my right arm is much better, I will now revert to my usual style! Train stations express the excitement and sense of potential of a journey in a way that airports sadly fail to do. It has something to do with their age - the sense you get of so many previous generations having started journeys - and something to do with the grandness of their architecture. St Pancras station, London. The Gare (now Musee) D`Orsay in Paris. The Maranouchi side of Tokyo Station. And so on. No wonder artists over the ages have been inspired. The sense of grit and purposefulness in Monet`s St Lazaire. The intriguing story in Manet`s The Railway Station; what is the lady with the open book and lapdog thinking? And the little girl with the blue ribbon with her back to us. She is staring out at the smoke which promises the excitement of future trips perhaps, but held back for now by the implacable iron bars, painted in stark verticals in Manet`s favoured black. And the Victorian bustle in Frith`s painting of Paddington Station. One of my favourite places in New York City is the main concourse at Grand Central station. This cavernous space measures 275 ft long, 120 ft wide and - forming an azure canopy 125 feet above - there is the wonderful astronomical ceiling frescoed with the constellations. If you have time on your hands you can hang out at one of the bars or restaurants that occupy the mezzanine spaces at either end of the concourse. Have a cocktail. Meet a friend. Watch the people below. The last time I was there I took a series of photographs, trying to capture the particular atmosphere conveyed in that strange pale yellow ochre half-light where the urgency and noise of several hundred hurrying commuters is absorbed by the vastness of the space. When later I looked at these shots I noticed in one of them what looks like a bride and groom. Look above and you can see them in the bottom right of the picture, facing each other, holding hands. It doesn`t seem to be posed. There were no other photographers around at the time. Apart from the portly gentleman to their left who has perhaps glanced in their direction, they are unnoticed by all. In their own little world. Reminds me of Auden`s `Musee des beaux arts` : "Everything turns away quite leisurely....and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen/Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky/Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on".
This inspired me to start a painting. I`ve yet to finish it, but I do feature the mystery couple. Hence, "Wedding at Grand Central Station". The figures take time and are fiddly (and I`ve got the perspective wrong with a few of them - can you spot the 8 foot tall Amazonian with the handbag and traveller case, mid-left?!) but I hope I will get back to finishing it before too long.... I mentioned the teacher who first introduced me to oils, `Deadly` Hedley Moore. Irascible during maths lessons (particularly when I was being put on the spot) he was nevertheless a gentle soul outside of class, and when taking extra-curricular art showed a fine eye and a sensitive touch with a sable brush.
Blinking through the smoke of an untipped cigarette permanently wedged between his lips he would start me off with a painting. This one was I think copied from some magazine. The base was a piece of wood, not gessoed, just paint applied directly using turps and no other medium. I must have been about 11 or 12 at the time, and all I can remember are two things. One, I think he must have done the lion`s share of work on this. I think I painted the `first layer` and then he touched it up with a judicious use of flake white to show the moon reflected on the waves, and certainly the cloud effect was beyond my skill at that stage. Second, he used the wood end of a matchstick to apply the black paint for the sailing boat. On the reverse of the wood panel (shown below) you can see workings for another painting. The panel was originally double the size, below was another painting I did, but for some reason I cut it in half and discarded the other one - another seascape and rather a poor effort. I keep this with me to remind me of where my love of art and painting first started. Through the auspices of a Prep School Maths teacher, in 1969. If you haven`t already discovered it, Pinterest is a wonderful way to find interesting and unique images of just about anything in which you are interested. Like Google Images, only a classier selection.I first came across it when a friend was planning a wedding and was looking for inspirational ideas for invitations and decoration. And so I started my own Pinterest site. The National Gallery`s decision to allow visitors to use their camera phones to photograph the artwork (see article from the Independent) got me thinking again about the relationship that people have with art. Particularly, how they look at art when visiting a gallery. Fascinated by this subject I have compiled a Pinterest site filled exclusively with such images (click on the link to visit the site). How you look at art reveals something about your character. There are the `sprinters` who move through rooms with hardly a glance. The `deep thinkers` who sit for goodly passages of time in front of a favourite piece. The `exhibition devotees` who move dutifully through the rooms in the recommended sequence, looking at every single piece, in thrall of their headpieces. And then the `selective browsers` who ignore much stuff only to examine a particular piece in minute detail, bending forward so close to the canvas as to cause alarm with the museum staff. Of course, what just about every artist is trying to achieve is that special moment when the viewer suspends their disbelief and looks at their work as if it is reality, or at least is sufficiently smitten with the work as to dive into the image as into a better, purer world. Accepting the fictional, the fabricated, as a kind of magical alter-universe. These Pinterest images reflect this relationship. Look at how the couple is so smitten by the hyper-reality of Chuck Close`s portrait that they are drawn into it as by a powerful magnet. Smile at the ironic ones, such as this famous Norman Rockwell piece entitled `The Connoisseur`. And think about ones which simply reflect the awe that people feel in front of a masterpiece, as with these bambinos below. Next time you visit an art gallery, take the time not only to view the artwork, but to observe the other visitors. It can be quite revealing! This is the first blog of my new website. After 33 years behind a desk I can`t tell you how happy I am finally to devote my time to the spirit of creativity that has been ever-present all my life but is only now emerging, blinking into the sunlight. There are so many ideas I have for new series of paintings and I can`t wait to crank up the volume. I am new to this blogging lark but in the spirit of keeping the content relevant and interactive, I am going to give you some options for blog content and ask you vote on them. The subject with the most support will form my next blog. In the absence of any response (entirely possible) I will just go with whatever is currently piquing my curiosity. So here goes:
1. Oils v. acrylics 2. My methods of painting 3. Inspirational artists (one each blog, to include Richard Estes, Velasquez, Norman Rockwell, Monet, Manet, Antonio Lopez, John Singer Sargent, Chuck Close, Caravaggio, Jack Vettriano, Gustave Caillebotte, to name but a few) 4. What is good about Pinterest and why my Pinterest site is full of pictures of people staring at art 5. In search of a studio 6. Favourite artists supply shops 7. Art galleries of the world (ones that I`ve been to and love, that is) to include Musee D`Orsay, The National Gallery, The Tate Liverpool, The Prado, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, etc (you get the picture). Use the feedback form to tell me which of the above interests you. Arigato! In the meantime, here is a painting that transfixes me every time I find myself in front of it (and no, it is not photorealistic): Claude Monet, "Bain a La Grenouillère", 1869, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
AuthorSimon Dalby Archives
December 2023
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