Between: watercolours

Showing posts with label watercolours. Show all posts

Tuesday, 16 November 2021

Artlyst - Pablo Bronstein: A This-World Vision Of Hell

My latest review for Artlyst is of Pablo Bronstein: Hell in its Heyday at Sir John Soane's Museum:

'With this series, Bronstein is looking back at the world in which his own grandfather grew up and the technology that was prized at that time. He writes that the things that generated wealth and pleasure then ‘are now seen as responsible for much of the ruination and misery of the contemporary world’.

Bronstein describes his panoramas as ‘a reinterpretation of the 19th and 20th-century glorification of technological and economic advancement’, ‘a bombastic cityscape in which the now misplaced optimism in ‘progress’ is drawn as hyperbole’ ...

Not immediately and obviously an exhibition for the period of Cop26, this is, nevertheless, one that reveals our taste for the instant, excessive, tawdry, gaudy, flashy and swanky to be, not only kitsch and trivial, but also so seductively addictive that it has gradually yet inevitably led us to the edge of an environmental emergency which we, judging from the Cop26 negotiations, continue to only partially acknowledge and address. The unaffordable cost – the hellish expense – paid for our consumerist addictions is at the heart of this exhibition. Bronstein reveals us to truly be in the heyday of Hell.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Articles -

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Gavin Bryars With Tom Waits - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

Wednesday, 28 July 2021

Waddesdon Manor: Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau (1826-98) was one of the most brilliant and influential artists associated with the French Symbolist movement. Gustave Moreau: The Fables at Waddesdon Manor aims to display some of the most important works he ever made, unseen in public for over a century.

In collaboration with Musée National Gustave Moreau, Paris, this exhibition reveals for the first time 35 watercolours created by Moreau between 1879 and 1885, on loan from a private collection. They were part of a series commissioned by the art collector Antony Roux to illustrate the 17th-century Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (many of which derive from Aesop’s Fables). They were exhibited in Paris in the 1880s to great acclaim and in London in 1886, where critics frequently compared the artist to Edward Burne-Jones.

Moreau made 64 works for the series, which subsequently entered a Rothschild collection; however, a significant proportion was lost during the Nazi era. The surviving works have not been exhibited since 1906 and they have only ever been published in black and white.

Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote that "Gustave Moreau is an extraordinary, unique artist ... a mystic, locked away in his Paris cell, where the buzz of contemporary life cannot reach him ... Lost in ecstasy, he sees splendid magical visions, the gory apotheoses of other ages."

Read more about Moreau in my post describing a visit to the Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris.

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Rush - A Farewell To Kings.

Sunday, 16 May 2021

Zi Ling: Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 209th Exhibition

I'm looking forward to seeing new work by Zi Ling this week in the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 209th Exhibition at Mall Galleries - 20 - 29 May 2021.

Zi Ling (b. 1985, HuangShan, China) is a visual artist based in Bristol. She was born to the Chinese painter HuiTao Lin, a pioneer of the 85 New Wave Movement. Since the age of four, she received formal training from him in drawings.

She has studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Chelsea College of Arts and Central Academy of Fine Arts China.

Her work of etchings, watercolours, drawings, video art and mixed medium have been displayed at many prestigious venues and exhibitions. She received the Cass Art Prize (2019), DAC Beachcroft Space Prize (2018), Frank Herring Easel Award (2018), First Prize of Leathersellers Award (2016), and the Rosemary & Co. Prize (2015) from the Princess Michael of Kent.

She is a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the co-Artistic Director of the theatre company Eldarin Yeong Studio.

See Ling's work here and here.

During her early years she focused mainly on etching, fascinated with mark making of abstract figures. Now the relationship between brush, colour and paper is what excites her in portrait painting using watercolour as her medium. Ling observes people and also finds emotional moments from photographic images as inspiration. With watercolour, she trusts her intuition before making any marks. She thinks each portrait is a result of whatever truth one feels at the very beginning. Colour is important to her because for her it represents different personalities and realities.

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Joni Mitchell - Song For Sharon.

Thursday, 3 September 2020

Zi Ling: Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 208th Exhibition & Wiltshire Creative Summer Open 2020

Looking forward to seeing Zi Ling's work in the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 208th Exhibition at Mall Galleries.

Zi Ling is a visual artist based in Bristol. She was born to the Chinese painter HuiTao Lin, a pioneer of the 85 New Wave Movement. Since the age of four, she received formal training from him in drawings.

She has studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Chelsea College of Arts and Central Academy of Fine Arts China.

Her work of etchings, watercolours, drawings, video art and mixed medium have been displayed at many prestigious venues and exhibitions. She received the Cass Art Prize (2019), DAC Beachcroft Space Prize (2018), Frank Herring Easel Award (2018), First Prize of Leathersellers Award (2016), and the Rosemary & Co. Prize (2015) from the Princess Michael of Kent.

She is a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the co-Artistic Director of the theatre company Eldarin Yeong Studio.

She also has work in the Wiltshire Creative Summer Open 2020. This exhibition celebrates the creativity that is flourishing within the artistic community by providing a platform for artists at any stage of their career, who are based in Wiltshire or adjoining counties. It showcases 80+ artworks in any medium across 2D and wall-hung shallow relief - such as painting, drawing, photography, textiles, wood, mixed-media, ceramics, glass etc.

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Over The Rhine - All My Favourite People.

Sunday, 29 July 2018

Foyer display: Jan Gilchrist

St Martin-in-the-Fields is home to several commissions and permanent installations by contemporary artists. We also have an exciting programme of temporary exhibitions, as well as a group of artists and craftspeople from the St Martin’s community who show artwork and organise art projects on a temporary basis.

One of the initiatives from this group is a changing display of work by the group members or artists linked to the group. The changing monthly display in the Foyer of the Crypt for August is by Jan Gilchrist. Each month a different member of the group or artists linked to it will show examples of their work, so do look regularly to see the changing display.

Jan is showing four watercolours, ‘Penguins on a hike,’ ‘Ardglass Harbour Co. Down,’ ‘Seascape Barry Island,’ and ‘A Danish fishing boat’. She writes: ‘I was born and brought up in Barry South Wales, coming to London as a registered nurse in the 1970’s. After joining the St Martin-in-the-Fields congregation where Ian and I met and then married, we moved to Maidenhead to live where our son and daughter were born. For nine years I have been a member of the ‘Maidenhead Painting Club’ after being persuaded by a member of the St Martin’s clergy that I needed to take up a hobby for myself, for which I will always be grateful. We are a group of amateur artists who enjoy different media. I find painting relaxing and fulfilling, so much enjoyment in observing colour and form.’

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Van Morrison and the Chieftains - Star Of The County Down.

Friday, 6 April 2018

Dry Room, Inside Job and King Lear

Dry Room is a cross-disciplinary piece about childhood trauma, friendship, and redemption. Following its successful premiere at the World Stage Design Quadrennial 2017, the show will be given its UK premiere at the Brighton Fringe before moving on to the Old Fire Station Oxford.

This weekend (6 - 8 April), however, the associate film Dry Room is being displayed at Tate Modern in Inside Job, which presents works by 135 employees from Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives, including painting, photography and sculptures. Tonight I was at the PV with Director & Co-Designer, Zi Ling, and Story writer & Producer, Eldarin Yeong.

Ling had a double reason for celebrating tonight as her watercolour King Lear won The Frank Herring Easel Award in her first exhibition as a Candidate Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. It is her fourth exhibition with the Institute since 2015 and she has four new paintings in the exhibition at Mall Galleries.

In addition to Dry Room, the following are also well worth looking out for at Inside Job: Ed Hadfield's ‘Affirmative 1’; Izna Bandey's ‘There Are No Words’; and Kyriaki Mitsou's 'TETRALOGY: PRAY LOVE TRY HOPE'.

Inspired by Surrealism art and the Story Stem technique - used by psychologists to study children's inner world, the story of Dry Room follows three adopted children who are the survivors of childhood trauma. Natalie, a victim of child neglect and sexual abuse; Christopher lost his parents in an accident; Jack suffered domestic violence from his alcoholic parents. To escape from their haunting experiences, they embark on a journey of self-discovery and encounter many demons of the past.

Set in a Magritte-styled room, this performance installation gives an intriguing cinematic perspective to a narrative dance, by combining live music and conceptual art. Dry Room is directed and co-designed by Ling and the emerging designer Tong Zhao (Royal Shakespeare Company, Harper's Bazaar 150th Anniversary exhibition, Paris Fashion Week). Live music is played by the talented Spanish experimental cellist Carolina Bartumeu (Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Philharmoniker). Dry Room features Italian minimalist composer Giovanni Sollima's heartbreaking cello solo, Alone, and improvised music by Carolina Bartumeu.

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Giovanni Sollima - Alone.

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

Zi Ling & Eldarin Yeong

This year, Zi Ling has been accepted as a Candidate Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 206th Exhibition at Mall Galleries will show a diversity of styles and techniques, from traditional uses of the medium to more experimental and innovative paintings. Works on display are produced by members of the RI and other artists whose pictures have been selected to hang alongside these by the RI Council, including many young painters using water-soluble media in often new and exciting ways. This is Ling's fourth exhibition with the Institute since 2015. She will have four new paintings included in the exhibition.

This weekend, in a remarkable first, staff from all four British Tate galleries are to display their own artistic creations at Tate Modern in London. The exhibition, entitled Inside Job, will present works by 135 employees from Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives, including painting, photography and sculptures. Staff whose work will be displayed include curators, art handlers, guards, shop assistants, visitor assistants and people from the finance, restaurant and marketing departments. The exhibition has been partly financed by the Tate Social Fund.

Jing Eldarin Yeong joined the Tate in May 2017 and is showing Dry Room, an associate dance video of a cross-disciplinary piece that she wrote and produced last year for the World Stage Design Quadrennial. It is a collaboration between her Studio and the videographer Jevan Chowdhury. She says: 'To make it an independent piece from the theatre production, we used London cityscape as the backdrop and tried to capture the sense of isolation, self-estrangement and social meaninglessness. It is also about breaking the boundary of theatre, responding to the environment, and exploring non-conventional space.'

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Lizz Wright - Speak Your Heart.

Friday, 2 March 2018

Zi Ling and Bridget Adams

Zi Ling is one of 26 artists shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Arts Prize Award. Her work can be seen, with that of the other shortlisted artists, until 9 March at La Galleria, Pall Mall, 5b Pall Mall, 30 Royal Opera Arcade, London, SW1Y 4UY.

The aim of the Royal Arts Prize Exhibition and Award is to search out for and showcase artworks by artists that have embraced their individual exegesis in art, artworks that are a product of an inner balance in a world full of diversity and often chaos. The prize is awarded to artists that present works that are the product of this emotional connection between dream and reality; the organisers welcome contemporary art that shows the force driving individuals to express and affirm their personality and ego, through today’s modern art landscape.

Ling has also had four new paintings selected for the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 206th Exhibition at Mall Galleries from 6 to 21 April. Showing a diversity of styles and techniques, from traditional uses of the medium to more experimental and innovative paintings. Works on display are produced by members of the RI and other artists whose pictures have been selected to hang alongside these by the RI Council, including many young painters using water-soluble media in often new and exciting ways. This exhibition is an annual survey of how contemporary artists are using this age-old medium.

Having visited the Royal Arts Prize Exhibition this evening, I was also interested to see the work of Bridget Adams. Adams has been inspired Kahlil Gibran’s book called ‘The Prophet’ where she found a way through and endeavoured to live her life with his words as a guide. She says that his words, 'made sense to me and I always refer to them for strength.'

She continues:

'My first influence has been byzantine art in all its decorative and moral wonder. To me it is a beautiful way to convey the good and sacrifice that we all make at different stages in our lives. I enjoy the 2 dimensional aspects of some religious orthodox art which offers a way to communicate innocence and basic non-judgemental qualities that we have in bucketful’s when we are young and vulnerable. This is also in the oldest and narrow minded of us. Our views can become twisted and cynical and sometimes our wonder at the world and the people who belong to it, are overwhelmed with being the best they can be. To stand back and appreciate ourselves and each other has to be a positive contribution however small it feels.

My love of pattern, texture, colour and my great respect and admiration for many artists and craftspeople whether they are from a different century or practising artists is also a way to express and focus on celebration, wisdom, feelings and joy. It is a tool that I use to reflect passion in all its forms and in a healthy and spiritually fulfilling way.'

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Damien Rice - On Children.

Thursday, 31 August 2017

Foyer display: Fiona Hunter-Boyd

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Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High.

Sunday, 12 February 2017

SW3: Delight - Alice Bree, Zi Ling & Brian Mears

SW3 by Alice Bree, Zi Ling and Brian Mears

EXHIBITION DATES 7 March - 18 March 2017

Chelsea Gallery, Chelsea Old Town Hall London

Opens from Mondays to Saturdays 09:30am - 05:00pm, Sundays 01:00pm - 04:00pm

This exhibition, curated by Eldarin Yeong Studio, showcases the works of three inspiring artists responding to the theme of 'Delight'.

Alice Bree is a ceramic artist trained at the Central School of Art and Design in the 80s. She taught ceramics in the Drawing Schools at Eton College and the University of Hertfordshire for over ten years. Her work has been influenced by Gordon Baldwin with whom she worked at Eton. Her earthenware decorated with engobes produces an organic and colourful surface structure in a distinctive style.

Zi Ling is a visual artist trained at the Chelsea College of Arts and Central Academy of Fine Arts China. Her watercolour portraits and figurative works have been presented at the Royal Insititute of Painters in Water Colours, Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, Columbia Threadneedle Prize, Society of Women Artist, and the National Art Museum of China.

Brian Mears is a self-taught watercolour artist who started painting after his retirement from the Merchant Navy as an engineer. Apart from Nature, he has also been inspired by the works of Caspar Friedrich. His watercolour landscapes, capturing the English countryside with delicacy and detail, have been featured in exhibitions at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields and at the Menier Gallery, London.

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Carleen Anderson - Maybe I'm Amazed.

Thursday, 22 September 2016

Zi Ling & Sunday Times Watercolour Competition

Today I was at the Private View for the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition exhibition at the Mall Galleries to see Zi Ling's Anniversary (2016), one of her watercolour series on older couples.

Ling creates portraits or explorations of relationships by working from photographs with which she feels an intuitive connection. Previously Ling has had work in the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours 2016 Exhibition (where she won the Leathersellers First Prize of £1000 to a young artist with her painting 'Rikishi'), Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2016, Columbia Threadneedle Prize exhibition, the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition exhibition 2015, and Society of Women Artists (where she won the Rosemary & Company Art Prize); all at the Mall Galleries. Click here to see examples of Ling's work.

I also liked Adrian Baynes' Falling Angel in the Derwent Prize exhibition.

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Moby - Saints.

Tuesday, 8 March 2016

Zi Ling & the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize exhibition

Zi Ling's watercolour entitled 'Cigarette Break' (2015) is in the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2016 at the Mall Galleries. Ling creates portraits or explorations of relationships by working from photographs with which she feels an intuitive connection. Previously Ling has had work in the Columbia Threadneedle Prize exhibition, the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition exhibition, and Society of Women Artists (where she won the Rosemary & Company Art Prize); all at Mall Galleries. Click here to see examples of Ling's work.

Now in its eleventh year, the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize is an open competition, which encourages the very best creative representational painting and promotes the skill of draughtsmanship. Created in 2005 by The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and The Lynn Foundation, the competition is one of the most prestigious awards for artists in the UK, this year offering total prize money of £30,000. The exhibition features the very best in British figurative painting, showcasing work of both established and young contemporary artists, as chosen by a panel of highly regarded art world figures.

This annual exhibition is held at the Mall Galleries, The Mall, London SW1. The 2016 exhibition is there until 13 March followed by a touring exhibition to Guildford House Gallery from 25 June – 17 July 2016. Approximately 100 paintings are selected for exhibition and all works are for sale.

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Candi Staton - Even The Bad Times Are Good.

Thursday, 28 January 2016

Figurative Art Today

The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016: Figurative Art Today will be at the Mall Galleries from 3 to 20 February 2016, daily 10am to 5pm (closes 1pm on final day).

The Columbia Threadneedle Prize showcases the very best in new figurative and representational art.

The winner of The Columbia Threadneedle Prize will receive £20,000 plus a solo exhibition at Mall Galleries. The Visitors’ Choice Award, voted by visitors to the exhibition in London, is £10,000.

The exhibition will tour to Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy in July 2016 in an unprecedented exchange with Florence’s largest temporary exhibition space.

The show includes Tea, a watercolour by Zi Ling.

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Florence & The Machine - Strangeness and Charm.

Thursday, 31 December 2015

Poem: ... if we attend ...

Supple sensuous sinuous pencil lines combine
with sketchy swathes, swatches
and blotches of liquid colour,
minimal modelling merging near and far,
present and past on shallow space.
Glass chalices, open windows,
flowers and thorns, still life and landscape.
The Eucharist - one reality in the form of another,
heaven in ordinary - frames and forms his making –
all human making - sacramental signification,
inutile and gratuitous; graceful, playful,
light and loving, abundant and affirming.

If we attend the waters are freed,
aqueous light floods static subjects
as fluid flecks, flurries and washes of colour
suffuse, invade, imbue and inform
playing freely on forms creating flux,
confusing boundaries, circling round
transparent images, blending, merging all -
the wood and the trees - bringing all within
imaginations reach. The spiritual shimmering,
shining through the material, the universal
in the particular - seeing with, not through
the eye - for to pay attention, this is prayer.

A Londoner of Protestant upbringing,
Catholic subscription, and of particular
Welsh and English stock.
A Christian modernist chasing connection
through heritage and lineage,
interlinking, interleaving past and present;
like iconographers writing images,
David Jones opened windows into the divine
in Harrow-on-the-Hill, Capel-y-ffin,
Pigotts, and Portslade.

David Jones: Vision & Memory is at Pallant House, Chichester, until 21 February 2016. A concurrent exhibition The Animals of David Jones is on show at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. ‘if we attend’ (2015), a white, wall-mounted vitrine with translucent glazing and 16 porcelain vessels, is a new piece by Edmund de Waal produced especially for the David Jones exhibition at Pallant House. It references the calming slowing down effect of these words in the second line of Jones’s poem The Anathemata: ‘We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His groping syntax, if we attend, already shapes…’.

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David Jones - In Parenthesis.

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

Exhibitions update

An exhibition of contemporary watercolour painting, featuring 90 works by 80 artists, is now on show at the Mall Galleries, London until Saturday 19 September.

Visiting information: 14 – 19 September 2015. Mall Galleries, The Mall, London SW1. Daily, 10am – 5pm. Admission free. www.mallgalleries.org.uk.

The London exhibition will be followed by The Smith & Williamson Tour to venues across the UK, including Castle Fine Art, Birmingham (10 – 18 October 2015) and Guildford House Gallery, Guildford (14 November 2015 – 2 January 2016).

I visited the exhibition yesterday with Zi Ling who has two works in the show. Zi creates portraits or explorations of relationships by working from photographs with which she feels an intuitive connection. The result, in the case of her portrait Jonathan, is a visceral, expressive image which is among the most affecting in the show.

Tomorrow I will be at The Lovely Gallery in Sydenham for the Private View of Exuberant Flourishing by Clive Sheldon.

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Rickie Lee Jones - Jimmy Choos.

Thursday, 15 March 2012

Mark of the Cross

Henry Shelton and I have published Mark of the Cross, a book of 20 poetic meditations on Christ’s journey to the cross and reactions to his resurrection and ascension. These meditations focus on the mark of the cross in his life and body and were originally written as part of a community arts project in Hertford. They are complemented by a set of Henry's semi-abstract watercolours of the Stations of the Cross and the Resurrection.

These meditations and images are available via twelve baskets as a pdf book, a powerpoint presentation and as individual images. They are ideal for use within Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week and Easter services. The PowerPoint would work well with background music played whilst the viewers meditate on the imagery and words.

I will be using these meditations and images in the three hour devotion at St Margaret's Barking from 12 noon on Good Friday.

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Peter Gabriel - With This Love.

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Norman Adams @ Marle Place Gardens & Gallery

In Brenchley, near Tonbridge in Kent, Marle Place is a peaceful, privately owned Wealden garden, ten acres of formal planting and many more acres of woodland and orchard. It is a plantman and artist's garden, featuring a Victorian gazebo, Edwardian rockery and walled fragrant garden. A restored 19th century greenhouse with orchid collection, a mosaic terrace and ornamental ponds. The 17th century house with a massive chimney is of architectural interest, but not open.

The Gallery houses varied exhibitions throughout the season by contemporary painters, sculptors, potters and makers, on show and for sale. The current exhibition is Norman Adams RA: Spirit in the Garden. The exhibition consists of nine large watercolours all painted in the last 15 years of Adams' life. The exhibition examines the symbolism of Adams' abstract works and the origin of these forms in the emotional intensity of these religious and spiritual paintings. Adams' vast watercolours are alive, saturated, even baptised, with colour and passion.

This exhibition is part of a larger group of exhibitions called Cross Purposes and instigated by Mascalls Gallery, which includes Santiago Bell, Susan Shaw, Maggie Hambling and Craigie Aitchison. Centering on Chagall's drawings for the windows of nearby Tudeley which are coming to the UK for the first time, this exhibition explores the uses of the crucifixion by a broad range of artists featuring the work of many artists including Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, and Eric Gill. The exhibition addresses both meditative religious works as well as more horrific secular works. The exhibition tours to Ben Uri Gallery, London's Jewish Museum of Art. To listen to a review of this on Radio 3's Night Waves click here to go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rpwkh/Night_Waves_Ideas_Election_Maggi_Hambling/

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Brian Kennedy - Hollow.