"Pastels Today" - The Pastel Society Exhibition (#1)

Pura Ulun Danu Bratan
19.5" x 24.5", soft pastel
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Yesterday, I visited "Pastels Today", the annual exhibition of The Pastel Society (February 28th - March 11th 2007 at the Mall Galleries) and saw all 346 works being exhibited by members and non-members.

I'm splitting my posts about this in two and this one is about the exhibition as a whole. The one that follows (today) is about some of the artists whose work I liked as I want to do the highlights justice. I'm also going to be cross-referincing Vivien Blackburn's post about the exhibition on her blog 'Paintings Prints and Stuff'. [Update - here is Vivien's post with links to the work she liked.]

You can see some of work in the exhibition if you press the new button in the Mall Galleries menu 'Pastel Society Works for sale' or the 'Annual Show' menu item on The Pastel Society website. Having an online version of an exhibition seems to be very much the new thing that Societies need to do for annual exhibitions. It would be great if the whole exhibition was on-line. I guess this will only ever happen if submission ever switched to being via digital image - which would mean that all works had to have a digital image created for viewing. Digital submission would also help make submission to the exhibition more accessible. I know that quite a few people are put off by the costs involved in getting a work physically dispatched to London for viewing and selection and then returned again - irrespective of whether it is shown. Final selection could be from a shortlist compiled from digital submissions.

When writing about the exhibition last year, I included comments about the type of working being exhibited and was interested to see whether this had changed. I've included them again below - prefaced by DITTO meaning 'no change' and CHANGE meaning some sort of change has occurred. Any observations from this year in italics.

• CHANGE: In my opinion, the hang this year was very much improved. Most of the members had their individual work hung together as a group in a more defined way than previous years. In my view it created a much better impression of the overall scope and impact of their work - which may then create added value in relation to galleries which come looking and individual collectors. In addition, each small group had a brief CV for each individual member so displayed artist listing art education , society memberships, galleries etc. which I thought would interest visitors. However, I wasn't at all clear why this method of presentation wasn't used for all members of the society.
• CHANGE: The overall standard seemed to have improved.
  
• DITTO: usual emphasis on the representational and observed subjects; but many more abstract, or semi-abstract, paintings than I remember seeing at past exhibitions. (Abstract works remain only a small percentage of those displayed.)
  
• DITTO more of an emphasis on the impressionistic rather than the realistic - very little 'photo-realistic'.
  
• DITTO lots of landscapes and few (I think) florals (Not a lot of still life either. Very few florals this year)
  
• CHANGE: not a lot of conventional portraits (not unusual). (I had a general impression of more portraiture this year and there were a lot more figure works)
  
• DITTO: very few (pure) drawings (meaning without any attempt to complete a 'background')
  
• DITTO: very little use of coloured pencil - which is a permitted medium (Guess who forgot to reread her own post before submitting CP work for this year's exhibition!)
  
• DITTO: an awful lot more use of solvent? Some of the more 'painterly' paintings seem to have brush marks which aren't about a gesso underpainting on the support - are people trying to make pastels look like oils because pastels do not sell as easily as oils? (The impasto nature of some of the brush marks in some paintings suggest that the definition of 'acceptable media' may be is being stretched. At the very least more clarification would be extremely helpful)
  
• DITTO: some interesting framing solutions - more being framed as if oils (ie no mat) (Neutral frames and mats were favoured by a lot of artists. I also noticed a lot more where the frame had been painted to match the colour of the mat. This generally seemed to work well but is really only suited to certain types of work. There were also some dreadful frames - including ones which were not well made on very expensive works.)
  
• DITTO: very few sold after the Private View and first day - which I would guess is prime time to make sales. A reflection on the artwork or the marketing? (Same again this year after the first 4 days. Maybe time for the Society to get organised around an Internet site exhibiting all works for sale? If Society exhibitions are only focused on displaying the best pastel work will they actually succeed in getting the best on offer for sale? )

If would be great if further change and similar improvements could be made for next year. My suggestions would include:

• an open exhibition for non-members along the lines of 21st Century Watercolours - the exhibition run by the Royal Watercolour Society which was featured on my blog last week. Any society exhibition which is dominated by the work of members always runs the risk of minimising exposure of interesting new work by emerging artists and other non-members. I think Societies as old and as esteemed as The Pastel Society can afford to follow the admirable lead taken by the Royal Watercolour Society.
  
• a catalogue which is more complete - detailing both dimensions of the picture and media used. It was very apparent that some were mixed media. I'd much rather have proper data than a glossy presentation.
  
• an online version of the complete exhibition with merchant facilities - displaying digital images of all works with complete data on either the Mall Galleries site or The Pastel Society site. At present there are limited images of members work only.
  
• links on The Pastel Society website between awards and an image of the work which got the award. It's just a list at the moment. There's no link to the people providing the prizes either.
  
• clearer guidance about photography of work within the galleries - I noticed several people using cameras to take close-up shots of artwork.
  
• better signposting within the gallery by the Mall Galleries. I didn't see the usual 'key' (map) to where works are hung this year. I wonder how many people will miss all the works in the room at the rear.
• a Pastel Society website blog with some content (the site has a blog but no content!). I think this might be because they're using a template design.
  

[Note: I tried coloured pencil for my submissions this year and wasn't successful. I should read my own posts! But they didn't like my pastel either - see image at top - c'est la vie! Apologies if the image for this is not great - my 'busted' computer has finally returned from the computer clinic but is not yet hooked up again so I can't access the original image)

Links:

• Making A Mark: The Pastel Society - Annual Exhibition 2006 (March 2006)
  
• The Pastel Society
• The Mall Galleries
• 
  

Drawing a Head: Waterhouse meets the dreadlocks

Drawing Heads, Princes Drawing School, 1st March 2007

20" x 16"; pencil on Daler Rowney heavy cartridge paper
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm back to drawing both models (and bits of other people who are also drawing!), although I'm going to focus in future on making one of them much larger than the other.

These two were a terrific pair. Quite apart from being brilliant life models (no moving or twitching) they had stunning faces and it was difficult to choose which to feature. I've gone for the lady with what I think of as the quattrocento/pre-raphaelite face (very topical for this month's project subject). Isn't her face beautiful - I bet she's in huge demand as a life model. The fact that he had two very long dreadlocks going down his back from the rest of his hair which was in subdued mohican mode made for such a neat juxtaposition I just had to do both of them!

My tenosynovitis kicked in again and so this drawing was done in about 75 minutes before I had to stop drawing. This is all I got done in class, however I might complete the tones for the background wall and overhead beam before posting on my website.

For those of you who have not seen my drawing heads series from drawing class before you can see more in the Drawing Heads Gallery on my website. These were all done during my weekly "Drawing a Head" class at the Prince's Drawing School.

[Update: This post has had to be republished in order to delete the first post which had a major spam comment attached which had sneaked through. Please note - I check the identity of all those who comment and the next time I'm uncertain but my gut says "no" that comment will not be getting the benefit of the doubt as the offending comment did.

Note for all would-be spammers: Please note that Blogger automatically inserts 'no follow' tags after each name link - so you never gain any link love for your blog by commenting on mine]

Technorati tags: art, drawing, drawing class, drawing people, portrait, pencil

From Bankside to the City of London - the view from Tate Modern

St Paul's Cathedral from Tate Modern
8" x 10"pencil and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This last week I've sat in the Tate Modern at Bankside twice and sketched the view it offers of the City of London on the north bank of the River Thames. Both sketches are as completed on site in about 45 minutes using a very basic sketching kit.

• On Tuesday I had lunch next to the window in the 7th floor restaurant and watched the tidal river retreat as I drew St Pauls Cathedral (and the cranes). It's currently undergoing stone cleaning and has a rather horrendous plastic covering at one end.
• Yesterday I sat a little further along next to the window in the Friends Room on the 6th floor - with Shirley (of Paper and Threads) - and this time drew the former NatWest Tower and the Gherkin (30 St. Mary Axe) - and yet more cranes. Later on, as I walked down Cheapside - going east from St Paul's I began to realise why I could see so many cranes! They seem to be completely redeveloping this area.
  

The Nat West Tower And the Gherkin from Tate Modern Friends Room
8" x10" pencil and coloured pencils in Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Note for Shirley - I've just found out that the former NatWest Tower has a bar called Vertigo 42 at the top (currently being refurbished)! Maybe we'll go for broke on aerial views on your next visit?

PS I may not post tomorrow as I'm out at two more exhibitions - this time with Vivien Blackburn. We're going to see the Pastels Society Exhibition at the Mall Galleries and Renoir's Landscapes at the National Gallery.

Note re Tate Modern - take from 'The Building' section of their website:

By about 1990 it was clear that the Tate Collection had hugely outgrown the original Tate Gallery on Millbank.....Tate Modern was created in the year 2000 to display the national collection of international modern art (defined as art since 1900).....An immediate problem was whether the modern art gallery should be a new building or a conversion of an existing building, if a suitable one could be found. As a result of extensive consultations, particularly with artists, it was decided to search for a building to convert. When the building that is now Tate Modern presented itself, it appeared something of a miracle. It was a former power station that had closed in 1982, so it was available. It was a very striking and distinguished building in its own right, by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. It offered all the space that was required. Not least, it was in an amazing location on the south bank of the River Thames opposite St Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London. Plans were almost immediately formulated to build a footbridge to link the new gallery to the City. The fact that the original Tate Gallery was also on the river made a satisfactory symmetry, and meant that the two could be linked by a riverboat service.

Links:

• Tate Modern
• St Paul's Cathedral
• 30 St Mary Axe (the 'Gherkin')
• Tower 42, 25 Old Broad Street ( the former 'NatWest Tower')

Technorati tags: art, colored pencils, coloured pencils, drawing, sketching, sketchbook,

21st Century Watercolours at Bankside Gallery

The Célé Valley from Chateau Béduer

watercolour sketch
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Yesterday Shirley (Paper and Threads) from New York and I went to see the 21st century watercolour exhibition at the Bankside Gallery, home of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) and the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RSPP). For this open exhibition for non-members of the RWS, artists were invited to submit up to three water-based paintings on paper and work was juried in.

First the blurb about the exhibition and then my comments about this exhibition - which was showing work of both an excellent standard and interest.

21st Century Watercolour
Fri 16-Feb-2007 to Sun 11-Mar-2007
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The Royal Watercolour Society’s open exhibition is a passionate celebration of watercolour as a vibrant medium for the 21st Century. The exhibition supports artists of any age and is not prescriptive about size or subject matter. The result is a breath-taking exploration of the possibilities of this beautiful medium. Take this opportunity to adorn your walls with work by an emerging artist.

I'd previously managed to get my dates mixed up, mistook Tuesday for Thursday and hence this was my second visit to the exhibition. On the first visit, I was struck by how many of the paintings were representational but also how few were realistic (in the sense of 'tending to look a bit like a photo' / more of a 'traditional approach' to watercolour). This time I got more scientific and did a count! My rough estimate is that of the 192 paintings, 21 were 'realistic' and 19 were realistic-ish making some 20% of the total. I also took a look at the webpage for the 2006 exhibition of the RWS and noted that the styles were not so different - so take a look and you'll see what I mean.

My favourite paintings in the exhibition were two small square paintings in watercolour and gouache by Ron Ford - "Winter Fields" and "Summer Fields". They subtlety of colour and texture achieved made me think that these two slightly abstracted version scenes of fields were actually a bit of a pun on 'colour field'.

I also very much liked Sue Rubira's giant and striking face of "Maggie". You can see the finished version on her blog here and also see stages on the blog posts prior to that. Given that one of her previous paintings came second in the 2006 Singer and Friedlander (watercolour) competition, I'm rather expecting to see another of Sue's excellent portraits winning a prize at the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the NPG

Fay Ballard's huge painting "Burdock" of 5 rather large burdock leaves very much challenged the conventional format for paintings of a botanical nature. Her paintings on her website would very much benefit from having their dimensions identified though if they're all on the same sort of scale as this one.

I wasn't expecting to see quite so many paintings done in pen and ink and watercolour. They had great impact and I'm now minded to try adding some watercolour to some of mine - after I've invested in some waterproof ink and a suitable pen! Shirley and I both very much liked David Birch's drawings of interiors in pen and ink and watercolour.

The Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Purchase prize was awarded to Jenny Matthews for "Whacky Irises" which you can see on her website. She studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art under Elizabeth Blackadder and her style is not dissimilar to that of the renowned Royal Academician.

The exhibition prizewinners were:

• Baker Tilly Prize:Helen Slater (her painting "From Labworth Cafe Steps, Canvey Island, August15th 05" had a very strong extended portrait format. Its subject was very obviously a hot summer's day. The bottom edge comprised a small section of foreshore and small figures and the remainder of the painting was given over to a still and flat sea and an awful lot of sky with wispy high cirrus clouds. The treatment of the latter was masterful.)
  
• St Cuthbert’s Mill Prizes:
• 1st Prize - Katherine Jones
• 2nd Prize - Bill Henderson
• 3rd Prize - David Douglas
• Winsor & Newton Prizes:
• 1st Prize - Jim Dunbar (This was a very large painting of the inside of a shed looking out through the door and window. Shirley said it reminded her of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth and I have to agree - having seen a goodly selection of Wyeths at the Farnworth in Maine last September. Very reminisent both in terms of subject and manner of execution - although obviously executed in watercolour rather than the egg tempera which Wyeth tends to use.
  
• 2nd Prize - Katy Ellis (Shirley and I were both very taken by her watercolour and gouache painting "Backwaters in Kerala". I wasn't in the least bit surprised to see it had sold.
• 3rd Prize - Colin Merrin
• The Artist Prize: Chris Myers (The painting "Broken Morning, St Kilda" challenged some of the 'rules' by having the broken car referred to in the title on the right extreme of the wide landscape format of this realistic painting.)
  
• Royal Watercolour Society Award:Charles Williams (I'm afraid I was at a loss to understand why this painting got a prize - but there's at least one in every exhibition which is like that so it came as no surprise to me that there was one in this one too!)
  
• Elizabeth Scott-Moore Award: George Devlin. (His painting "Farms, Donegal" contained layers of broad brush marks in autumnal colours which were placed rather than brushed onto the paper.)
  

When looking for links to the artists I was struck by how few of the artists had a website. It's also a pity that the Bankside doesn't have an online version of the exhibition as is now common practice in a number of galleries. I'm convinced that NEAC's move to having a virtual online exhibition at the same time as their exhibition probably had a positive impact on sales.

[Note: On the basis that all posts must have an image, I'm going to have to have a go at some more watercolours! The one at the top of the page was done in a sketchbook in 1994 while painting at Chateau Béduer. It was a 'first' in terms of being rather looser with my use of watercolour but I switched to pastels soon after and never really pursued this further.......maybe I need to reconsider?]

Links:

• Bankside Gallery 48 Hopton Street, London, SE1 9JH. The website also contains summary information about the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. Details of membership and exhibitions are available on the site.
• Royal Watercolour Society
• Printworks Magazine - this very informative printing website contains information about the history of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (founded in 1880) as well as masses of resources information for painter-printmakers.

Technorati tags: art, exhibition, painting, watercolor, watercolour,

Introducing Waterhouse and the Pre-Raphaelites

The Lady of Shalott (1888)
John William Waterhouse (1849 - 1917)
Oil on canvas (image 153 x 200 cm)
Tate Britain (Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894)

The Fine Line Artists Art Project for March is, at least for me, an introduction to John William Waterhouse and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. That surprised you didn't it!

Waterhouse's legacy had been somewhat neglected for most of the 20th century: his art, along with that created by many of his contemporaries, fell rapidly out of fashion as a result of the impact of World War I and the subsequent changes in British society over the ensuing decades. However, in the late 1960s/early 1970s there was a gradual revival of interest in Victorian and Edwardian art which has been sustained to the present day. Waterhouse was honoured with a retrospective exhibition in 1978, and has been the subject of two monographs published within the last five years, the most notable being Peter Trippi's award-winning J.W. Waterhouse (Phaidon Press, 2002). Nowadays, several of Waterhouse's paintings, for example The Lady of Shalott (1888) and Ophelia (1894), can be ranked among the most recognizable, and beloved, of 19th century British art. (extract from the website - the art and life of John William Waterhouse)

Maggie absolutely adores his work and I haven't got a clue about him. However I do know a teeny weeny little bit about other artists who were part of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood - and you may know some of these names, especially if you're English. The first three were instrumental in founding the movement and the remainder have been associated with it:

• John Everett Millais,
• William Holman Hunt.
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti who led the medievalist side with his followers Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.
  
• Other artists more loosely associated with the Pre-Raphelite style included Ford Madox Brown and John William Waterhouse.

A quick review of some sources suggests that, broadly speaking, the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to get away from the 'classical' style of academic art (after Michelangelo and Raphael) being taught at the Royal Academy Schools at the time and wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento (the fifteenth century) period of Italian and Flemish art. Having seen some of the latter first hand in the National Gallery in London and in Italy (by artists such as Piero della Francesco and Fra Filippo Lippi) I can readily see why such sort of stance might be very attractive.

I've no idea at the moment what my artistic output for this project will be. I think I'm probably going to be adopting an art historian/detective's hat for this month and will be aiming to find out more about the different groups and what principles they adhered to - and any aspect which particularly interests me. For example, I've always been a big fan on William Morris and the Red House where he lived is near where I live and is home to the Arts and Crafts Movement that he founded - which derived from the Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism group.

I've bought a book to help me out. It's called J.W. Waterhouse and is written by Peter Trippi and is published by Phaidon. It's got some great reviews on Amazon - particularly in relation to providing information about the context of the art movements of his time. Peter Trippi is currently the Editor of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine and has previously been Director of the Dahesh, the only institution in the United States devoted to 19th and early 20th century European academic art.

I've started to make a list of some links below - and take this as being part of my initial reading list rather than I've read all of these in detail. For those interested in Waterhouse, the most important of these is the website set up as an appreciation of Waterhouse. Take a dip and see if you find anything which takes your fancy. You may need to make a big mug of the hot drink of your choice first and Maggie's supplying the cookies!

Links:

• The Art and Life of John William Waterhouse - an appreciation of the life and works of John William Waterhouse by Julia Kerr
  
• themes within Waterhouse paintings
• Paintings, sketches and drawings
• a library of articles and information about Waterhouse
• Wikipedia (remember to check how thoroughly an entry is referenced):
• John William Waterhouse
  
• Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
• The Victorian Web:
• Visual Arts
• The Pre-Raphaelites
• Sir John Everett Millais
• William Holman Hunt
• Dante Gabriel Rosetti
  

• a brief outline on the quattrocento

• web gallery of art
• Piero della Francesca
• Fra Filippo Lippi

Technorati tags: art, art history, drawing, painting , Tate Britain, Waterhouse,