Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Artists & Illustrators

Our Artists of the Year 2015 competition closed with a flurry of last-minute entries and we’ve already started to sift through them here at A&I Towers. The format has changed slightly this year and we’ll be revealing the 50-strong shortlist in our next issue. The winners will then be announced at our exhibition at London’s Mall Galleries on 22-27 February 2016. In the meantime, I was delighted to be asked to be a selector for the ING Discerning Eye 2015. This annual exhibition sees six collectors, artists and critics curate individual displays of smaller works. My fellow selectors included former Eastenders actor Larry Lamb and the ceramic designer Emma Bridgewater, who reveals her tastes in our interview on page 82. Selecting work from the open submission was a fascinating process,…

Artists & Illustrators has teamed up with Jackson’s Art Supplies this month to offer a free brush for every reader. Browse the Jackson’s catalogue bagged with this issue, place an order and claim your free Studio Synthetic size 12 round brush – worth £6.10. Jackson’s Series 505 brushes are made with the highest quality synthetic available, a silver ferrule and a simple but effective black polished handle. They have a superb point, great colour holding capacity, a lovely spring and all put together to make a top-class watercolour brush, not to mention the incredible price. To claim your free brush, simply place an order at www.jacksonsart.co.uk and enter the promo code FREEB at the checkout. Alternatively, mention the offer code while placing a telephone or email order with Jackson’s Art…

The Tate collection is arguably one of the most spectacular in the world, boasting more than 70,000 works of art that date from 1500 to the present day. A trip to any one of the institution’s four galleries can leave you feeling inspired and in awe, if not a smidgen overwhelmed. In the basement of Tate Britain, however, there is a cornucopia of material that has quietly gathered alongside the permanent collection. Known simply as the Tate Archive, it houses over a million items – sketchbooks, letters, photos and more. The aim of this collection to shed light on the lives and practices of the UK’s favourite artists, from Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth to John Constable and JMW Turner. Far from being a resource for academics only, it is…

When and how did your love of painting begin? Nobody knows because there wasn’t another artist in our family, but I’ve been artistic since I was a child. I was born on the side of a mountain in the Garw Valley in South Wales and, when I was a very small child, my grandfather took me to the top of the mountain and acquainted me with skyscapes. The sky has always been very important in my work because of this. I was also very keen on swimming, especially in the ocean, and that gave me an understanding of how to paint the movement of the waves. In your younger days you hung out with Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon. Did they influence your art at all? One thing that did…

There comes a time in an artist’s life when the fear of repetition and the desire to take one’s work in a slightly different direction becomes of paramount importance. And so I am forever striving to move away from a relatively literal style into that area of painting that sits somewhere just across the border from reality. Having no interest in purely abstract art, I strive to create a painting that is slightly enigmatic and leaves the viewer to fill in some of the more vague passages. The challenge, then, is to supply just enough information in a painting that allows for personal interpretation. There are some images that are immediately suitable for such a composition, and From There to Here, my painting of Chesil Beach in Dorset, is one…

MY FAVOURITE ARTISTIC PERIOD The Arts and Crafts movement (1). I grew up in north Oxford so I’ve got a complex love of Victorian architecture and suburban life. Although I think he was madly impractical, I love the eccentricity of William Morris and his passion for sewing. MY FAVOURITE REFERENCE BOOK The Concise British Flora in Colour by W. Keble Martin (2). My grandmother gave me an edition of it as a child and it’s got beautiful, classical illustrations. MY ESSENTIAL ART PRODUCT I use a lot of gouache (3). It’s a good medium for me because I can mix it as a ceramic underglaze and try out new sponges of colour on cartridge paper. MY FAVOURITE ART SHOP Picturecraft of Holt in Norfolk. It’s where my husband, my mother-in-law,…

ALL THAT SHE WANTS Last year I changed my bank account and forgot to renew my subscription to your magazine. I have been meaning to for ages, but when you had an ad for a subscription including a free gift of a watercolour set, I took the plunge. Brilliant! A great magazine with such a lot of exciting articles and a lovely tin of full-pan watercolours – what more could a girl want? Jenny Smy, via email WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN? Re: Masterclass, Issue 356 I was fascinated to read Kate Osborne’s article on the use of a range of different brushes in floral painting and loved the results she attained [below left]. Unfortunately, what was otherwise an inspiring and useful article was spoiled, for me, by the lack…

ENGLAND – LONDON Drawing in Silver and Gold Until 6 December Delicate metalpoint draughtsmanship. British Museum. www.britishmuseum.org Bridget Riley: Learning from Seurat Until 17 January 2016 How the Pointillist inspired her graphic art. Courtauld Gallery. www.courtauld.ac.uk Goya: The Portraits Until 10 January 2016 Dark and mysterious figurative paintings. National Gallery. www.nationalgallery.org.uk Giacometti: Pure Presence 15 October to 10 January 2016 Retrospective of figurative sculpture and more. National Portrait Gallery. www.npg.org.uk Masters of the Everyday 13 November to 14 February 2016 27 masterpieces of 17th-century painting. The Queen’s Gallery. www.royalcollection.org.uk Chris Wilkinson RA: Thinking Through Drawing Until 14 February 2016 Delve into the architect’s private sketchbooks. Royal Academy of Arts. www.royalacademy.org.uk Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture 11 November to 3 April 2016 Avant-garde mobiles and kinetic objects. Tate Modern. www.tate.org.uk ENGLAND –…

SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY The Prints and Drawings Study Room allows access to 30,000 works of European art. Highlights: Drawings by Raphael, Rubens and Seurat; prints by Scottish artists DY Cameron and William Strang. Booking: Contact (0131) 624 6593/6522 or printsanddrawings@nationalgalleries.org MUSEUMS SHEFFIELD The Yorkshire city’s visual art collection consists of 6,000 pieces from the 16th century to the present day. Highlights: Key works by 20th-century artists from Gwen John to Frank Auerbach. Booking: Contact (0114) 278 2766 or visual@museums-sheffield.org.uk V&A MUSEUM, LONDON The extensive archive is split into four categories: Art and Design, Theatre and Performance, the Beatrix Potter Collections and the V&A Archive. Highlights: William Morris’s letters. Booking: Register online in advance and book appointments at www.vam.ac.uk…

Thomas Fluharty is an expert at pulling faces – just not his own. The world’s most famous actors, musicians and politicians are putty in the hands of this talented American artist. For more than 30 years, the Minnesota resident has wielded his brush to create a string of affectionate and charming character illustrations and storyboards for everyone from Coca-Cola to the New York Times. In an era when caricatures are too often associated with jobbing sketchers sat on stalls in the tourist-trap piazzas of European cities and knocking out quick likenesses for 20 euros a time, Fluharty has taken the genre and elevated it to an art form. An acrylic painting of two baseball stars made for the cover of Time magazine now resides in the collection of the National…

1 Try painting en plein air in watercolour or gouache and using your sketches as a basis for oil paintings at a later stage. Working away from the subject allows you to better create your own interpretation of the scene. 2 Look back at your old paintings and pick one out that could be taken a stage further. Paint another version of it, but this time use a different colour scheme or leave out and obscure some of the detail. 3 Look at magazines for inspiration. I sometimes come across a totally unrelated image that contains colours I wouldn’t maybe think of putting together. I also try turning images upside-down and using the arrangement of shapes to suggest unusual landscape or interior compositions. 4 If a painting has drifted too…

I’m a life-long cyclist who enjoys watercolour sketching. However, on long tours – such as the three weeks I spent in India earlier this year and the 10 days in the West Highlands this summer – there’s the problem of how to avoid weighty, bulky painting kit. Trial-and-error has reduced this to two travel brushes, a three-deck watercolour set, an ergonomic pencil, a rubber, tissues, a tiny sponge and a small plastic bottle. These all fit into a toilet bag and weigh just half-a-pound. Water comes from my drinks bottle and I have a small, square Fabriano watercolour pad, too. There’s the added bonus that this same mini-kit also fits into my briefcase on business trips. Gordon Casely, Crathes, Kincardineshire That’s a tidy bit of packing, Gordon! Share more of…

Where do you make most of your work? I split my time between my cottage in Edinburgh and my office in Speyside, Norfolk, where I used to live and where my business, St Jude’s Fabrics, is still based. I’ve got a room to work in at both locations. The most important thing for me is that I’m surrounded by my reference material, whether that’s an image I’m working from, work by other artists, or objects that I’ve found. How do you balance the business with making art? I work a lot and I draw everyday. It’s hard but you find a way of doing it. If I’m going away for a few days, I’ll take a wood engraving because it’s portable or I’ll work on sketches for a design that…

Try as we might, it is occasionally inevitable that things can go wrong when selling works to clients. Once there is a problem, it’s how you remedy the situation that can mean the difference between an unhappy customer who spreads negativity and a happy client who will trust you in the future. If, like me, you get a little flustered in this sort of situation, it is worth considering your potential responses so that you can at least appear calm and confident should the need arise. It’s worth remembering that not all complaints are reasonable. One recent customer wanted to swap, at my cost, an old print for a new work, complaining he was now bored with his original purchase. There is no obligation to agree to such demands and…

Since the times of our Paleolithic ancestors, the idea of using a limited palette has been one of the painter’s most useful processes. Cave paintings such as those at Lascaux, France were made using only three pigments; yellow, red and black derived from iron-oxide deposits from the earth and carbon thought to be from fire ashes. These were materials used out of necessity rather than choice that allowed man to depict the world in simple terms. Throughout history, artists have used whatever was available to them at the time. Where Paleolithic man had only simple pigments, artist’s today have a plethora of hues and mediums to chose from with an almost unending choice at their disposal. Maybe that’s why the idea of going back to the limited palette and using…

What’s the best way to gather reference material? I spent a lot of time doing fieldwork to get to know a subject. I’ve also got a feeder outside my studio so goldfinches come back and forth all the time. It makes it easier when you’re watching them. Most of them can look quite similar from a distance but you have to look at the patterns in the plumage to make them distinctive. Is it better to work from photographs? I never work from photographs, but I do work from film sometimes. When I went to Africa, I took a lot of video footage that I used afterwards. Video helps capture movement and behaviour – it’s as if you’re watching the birds again. You can keep drawing from a moving image…