Tag Archives: artist

An artist from a remote island north of Australia

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THE TIWI ISLANDS, consisting of Bathurst Island and its larger neighbour Melville Island, can be found out at sea about 37 miles north of the northern Australian city of Darwin. According to the 2021 census, the Tiwi Islands have a population of about 2,350, most of whom are aboriginal Tiwi people. One of these people, who lives and works on Melville Island, is the artist Jonathon World Peace Bush. Currently, there is an exhibition of his paintings at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street (in London’s Mayfair), which ends on 15 March 2025.

Bush’s paintings are vividly coloured using the three natural pigment colours typical of Tiwi art: white, yellow, and red. At first sight, the paintings have an almost naïve appearance. But this is misleading. Bush shows the influence of great western artists (such as Francis Bacon and Velasquez) and at the same time manages to capture the spirit of Tiwi art. The resulting works are vibrant and exotic but at the same time have a familiarity about them. This is because the artist has chosen to depict famous historical figures such as St Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria, Pope Francis, and Christopher Columbus. These people are recognisable in Bush’s paintings, but are set against a background of traditional Tiwi decorative features. According to a leaflet available at the exhibition, Bush shows in his paintings the tension between western colonial culture and traditional Tiwi beliefs. He does this in an often-witty style. It was interesting to see an exhibition of works by an artist who combines the indigenous art of his home with what he has discovered about the nature of Western European art. Furthermore, I am sure that, like me, most people reading this will not have heard of the Tiwi Islands. I am very pleased that (quite by chance) we stumbled on this fascinating exhibition while visiting a less interesting show in the same building.

The brief but creative life of an artist from America

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BORN IN SEATTLE (USA), the black American artist Noah Davis (1983-2015) led a brief but productive life. Son of a lawyer and an educator, Noah became addicted to painting during his early teenage years. By the age of 17, he had his own studio. He studied art at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City between 2001 and 2004, and from 2004 onwards he lived and worked mainly in Los Angeles. Until 11 May 2025, there is an excellent exhibition of his works (mainly paintings) at the Barbican Centre Gallery in London. Until I visited this show, I had never heard of Noah Davis, but I am pleased that I have now ‘discovered’ him and his work.

Noah’s lifelong aim was (to quote what is recorded in Wikipedia as having been said by him):

“… to just show black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it …”

And to portray these scenarios in images created to illustrate:

“… where black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide …”

Although most of the paintings illustrate mundane or normal aspects of the lives of Black American people, Noah does so in ways that make the ordinary seem less ordinary and more magical.

In a documentary film that visitors to the exhibition can watch, Noah, who comes over as being a delightful person, made an interesting point. He said that in some forms of art like film, theatre, and literature, a story can gradually develop as the performance or novel proceeds. In painting, on the other hand, the artist must create an image that tells the whole story from start to finish, all on one canvas. This is something he does successfully.

In 2015, Noah was diagnosed with a rare but usually lethal carcinoma. Even while lying in bed in hospital, he continued to create images. In fact, he made 70 wonderful small works (many of them experiments in abstraction) while undergoing treatment for the disease that tragically ended his life. Many of these works are shown in the exhibition. During the month before his death, he made three large canvases, each one expressing his anticipation of his life’s imminent ending. One depicts two girls asleep on a sofa. This picture honours togetherness and restfulness. Another depicts a funeral. And the third shows a man walking in front of self-storage lockers. This image represents the loneliness in which each of us leaves the world of the living.

Having become acquainted with the creativity of Noah Davis, I feel that it is a great tragedy that this wonderfully poetic artist lived for such a brief time.

Fascinating paintings by an artist from Japan

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THERE IS A SONG by Sam Cooke that begins “Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, …”. Well, I do know something about both history and biology, but I do not know much, if anything, about Japanese art history. It turns out that this is not a great impediment if you wish to enjoy an exhibition showing at the Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair’s Grosvenor Hill until 8 March 2025. The visually spectacular show is called “Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami”.

Takashi Murakami was born in 1962 in Tokyo, where he lives and works. Apart from being a painter and a sculptor, he is also, as Wikipedia explained, involved in:

“… commercial media (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts.”

Many of the paintings in the exhibition at Gagosian are Murakami’s own interpretations of various styles used by Japanese painters in the past. Others gave me the impression of being less historically inspired, but more whimsically contemporary. The exhibition as a whole and in detail is a feast for the eyes. These beautifully executed, often intricately detailed, creations are joyous and uplifting. Maybe, if I knew more about the history of art in Japan, I would have gained even greater enjoyment from seeing them, but in this exhibition, the sentence ‘ignorance is bliss’ is certainly not inapplicable.

An artist who depicts nature only naturally

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AJIT KUMAR DAS was born in 1957, son of a laundry man (washer man). From an early age, he became fascinated with the wonderful  colours of the textiles that his father washed. He became involved with traditional fabric printing and design. Today, Das is recognised as one of India’s foremost natural dye painters.

 

Das paints on cloth using natural dyes, rather than artificially created colours. He uses dyes derived ed from sources such as, for example,  pomegranate rind, turmeric, fermented iron solution, indigo, and madder. He applies them using bamboo brushes and handmade quills. The colours are fixed using alum as mordant. With decades of experience and experimentation,  he is able to use the natural dyes to produce interesting colourful effects.

 

At his exhibition held in a  magnificent gallery in the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, we were able to view more than 20 of his paintings. All of them feature closely observed natural objects, such as foliage, birds, and fish, all arranged in patterns on the textiles. Some of these compositions are naturalistic. In others, Das has arranged the details from nature to produce lovely patterns.

 

We were fortunate to have been at the inauguration of the exhibition, during which the soft-spoken Das discussed his works with a panel of invited guests. From what I could gather, the panellists were more interested in the current state of natural dye crafts than the artist’s works on display. I am pleased that we made the journey from central Kolkata to the outlying district of Anandapur to see the exhibition and to learn a little about the use of natural dyes in traditional methods of textile making.

An artist who works and lives in Kolkata

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WHEN VIEWING ARTWORK or listening to music, my reaction  to, and enjoyment of it is governed by my initial visceral feelings that it evokes. If these feelings are satisfactory, my interest and enjoyment of the art increases, and I might begin to delve more deeply into understanding what the creator is trying to convey with his or her work.

 

My initial reaction to the oil paintings and ink drawings by Kolkata based artist Debajyoti Roy were very positive. Each of his works on display appealed to me. Many of the images are in black ink on white paper. A couple of larger paintings were more colourful, created with oil colours and inks.

 

 Some of the works in ink reminded me a little of Chinese or Japanese calligraphy. The works are both abstract and at the same time somewhat figurative. Yet, as I studied them, they gave me the feeling that they are abstractions of reality, often of biological phenomena.  As Roy explained in the exhibition catalogue:

“When someone engages with a piece of art, it is inevitable to interpret its visual aspects. Still, the essence lies in deeper inquiries that provoke interpretation of the perception and reality.”

I felt that this was certainly the case with what I saw of his creations.

 

Debajyoti Roy has created a set of images that are intriguing both visually and intellectually. It is a shame that his exhibition at the Jogen Choudhury Centre for Arts in south Kolkata is ending soon (on 11 January 2025). If you happen to be in Kolkata before it ends, it is well worth viewing.

Pleasing pictures in a gallery next to London’s Fitzroy Square

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AT FIRST SIGHT, there seems to be little content in the 17 paintings on show at the Tristan Hoare Gallery in London’s Fitzroy Square until the 13th of December 2024. It is not long before you realise that these images that contain larges expanses of colour are quite pleasing and visually intriguing. The artworks, all of which were created in 2024, are by Vipeksha Gupta (born 1989) who lives and works in New Delhi (India). As I looked at her work, I was reminded of the paintings by Mark Rothko in which the viewer is confronted with large areas of colour. In Rothko’s case, the borders between one colour area and its neighbour are deliberately ‘fuzzy’, whereas Vipeksha Gupta defines these transitions more sharply, yet not completely abruptly.

The gallery’s website (https://tristanhoaregallery.co.uk/exhibitions/71-ebullience-vipeksha-gupta/overview/) explained:

“The subtle abstraction of her work is seen within the repeated marks, geometries and the resistant voids made within the material. The surfaces of these works are generated through the iteration of small units into patterns that the artist then proceeded to render dynamic through gestures of rupture, incision, or slippage. She created folds, hinges or selvages of light, around which darkness could pivot and ripple. Gupta carefully plays with the structure of the paper, creating an interplay between illumination and shadow. This use of light shifts the narrative of her work as these folds generate movement, granting fluidity to the deep and mesmerising colours which she carefully crafts.” Abstraction is art often a creator’s way of distilling the essence of something that could also be represented more obviously as a recognisable physical object or scene. In Gupta’s case, she seems to be experimenting with her media (Fabriano paper [handmade with cotton fibre], paint pigments, graphite, and charcoal) to create subtly interesting visual effects for the eyes of the paintings’ viewers to enjoy. In this, she is successful. What at first viewing appeared to be organised areas of colour can be seen to be more complex and interesting the longer one looks at them. In addition, these paintings are somewhat soothing to look at.

Dragons in Mayfair and an artist from Pakistan

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ONE GREY SEPTEMBER afternoon, we stepped into the Almine Rech gallery in London’s Mayfair a few days before its wonderful exhibition of paintings, “Summer of Dragons”, by Hiba Shahbaz was due to end (on the 28th of September 2024). Each of the works on display depict dragons, and some of them also include human figures, often scantily dressed.

Hiba was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She studied Indo-Persian miniature painting in Lahore’s National College of Art. Then, she studied in the USA at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (New York City), where she was awarded her Master of Fine Arts degree. She now lives and works in the USA.

The skills she gained while training to paint Indo-Persian miniatures can be seen in the much larger paintings, which are on display at Almine Rech. Some of the paintings evoked memories of Chinese or Japanese art. Others depict dragons in the company of naked women. All the paintings, including some wooden boxes decorated with paintings, were completed in 2024. I suspect that had she remained in Pakistan and produced the same images, those containing the nudes might have been severely frowned upon.

We left the gallery, feeling very satisfied with what we had seen. Although the clouds above us had become more threatening, the visual experience of the exhibition brightened our moods.

Discovering the versatility and creativity of an artist born in Lancashire

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UNTIL AUGUST 2024 when I visited Salford, I believed that there was little that excited me about the work of the artist Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976). My first impression of this artist was back in the 1970s and ‘80s, when reproductions (posters) of his paintings of industrial landscapes crowded with stick-like depictions of people were popular items in print shops of the Athena chain. I liked the pictures, but there seemed to be little variety amongst the paintings that were reproduced for sale.

My appreciation of Lowry’s art was not improved after seeing a special exhibition of his paintings held at Tate Britain in 2013. The paintings were badly displayed. There were too many of them crowded on to the walls of the galleries. They were so densely packed into the gallery that they were difficult to examine carefully. As far as I can remember, there was little difference between the subject matter depicted in the paintings. Most of them were of the kind that I had seen reproduced in the Athena shops. I came away from the exhibition neither being impressed by it nor having gained more admiration for Lowry.

So, in August 2024 when we headed for The Lowry, a modernistic cultural centre at Salford Quays in Greater Manchester, which contains a collection of artworks by Lowry, my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened. The Lowry itself is a successfully adventurous example of modern architecture, which is well worth seeing. It contains a gallery devoted to the works of LS Lowry. Our visit to this gallery, which contains about 400 of his artworks, was, as the saying goes, ‘mind-blowing’. First of all, in comparison with the 2013 exhibition at the Tate, the works of art are extremely well displayed. Secondly, and more importantly, what we saw completely changed my mind about Lowry’s works.

Although there were several of Lowry’s works in the style favoured by customers of Athena’s outlets, these wonderful pictures were outnumbered by other images which demonstrate Lowry’s versatility as an artist. Lowry painted many faces and portraits, all of which convey the personalities of the people portrayed and the artist’s sometimes quirky or humorous perceptions. There are numerous images – both sketches and paintings – of ships. There are evocative landscapes devoid of people. Most surprising to me, are his paintings of seascapes, which are so brilliant that they put Lowry alongside Turner in his ability to capture the sea on canvas. Apart from paintings, there are numerous sketches and ‘doodles’ on display, each one of which demonstrates Lowry’s skill as a draughtsman.

The immense variety of what is on display in the gallery in The Lowry demonstrates the amazing diversity of LS Lowry’s depictions of life in Lancashire and elsewhere. The exhibition at Salford Quays opened my eyes to his brilliance, and now I realise how wrong I was when I came to a judgement of his talents before having discovered how wide a range of art he created so skilfully.

He painted artworks on the floor using a household broom

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ED CLARK (1926-2019) WAS born in New Orleans. He was an Afro-American. In 1944, at the age of 17 he joined the US Army Airforces. After the war, he received US Government financial assistance for further education, help given to those who had served in the military during WW2 (the GI Bill). He studied art in Chicago before moving to Paris (France). He arrived there as a competent figurative painter, but soon became fascinated with abstraction, such as practised by Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.

Although he was a competent portraitist, Clark began to question the value of realistic figurative painting when photography could do the job so well. He moved to creating works that were mainly abstract. Many of his paintings are on display at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate until the 1st of September 2024.

Ed Clark with a broom

The paintings that we viewed at Margate are exciting and most of them are almost, if not completely, abstract. For most of his creative life, Clark worked in an interesting way. First of all, he painted with his canvases spread out on the floor. This way, he explained in a film being shown at the exhibition, his paint was not subjected to gravitational pull. Most artists paint on surfaces which are far from horizontal – on easels, for example. This means that the wet paint is subject to gravitational pull before it has dried. By painting on the floor, Clark explained, this small but significant gravitational drag does not occur.

Another distinctive feature of the way Clark worked was his choice of brushes for applying the paint. He did not use artists’ paint brushes. Instead, he threw batches of paint onto his horizontal canvases and worked them into his pictures using ordinary domestic brooms, such as are normally used to sweep the floor. This is illustrated in the film, and the effects he produced using sweeping movements are beautiful and ingenious. In addition to brooms, he also applied paint with his hands, rubbing the paint into the canvas. Clark described that by working on the floor he became more intimately involved with his creations.

We had come to the Turner Contemporary to view some sculptures by Lynda Benglis, and had never heard of Ed Clark. However, after seeing the superb exhibition of his creations, we have become his fans.

From rural Cornwall to the Royal Academy in London

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ONE OF MY FAVOURITE National Trust properties in England is Trerice, which is about 2.3 miles south of the Cornish town of Newquay – not one of my favourite places in Cornwall.  We visit the house and gardens at Trerice every time we spend time in Cornwall, and always discover soothing there that we had not noticed before.

This tine (June 2024), one of the volunteers working in the house pointed out a painting by John Opie (1761-1807). I had not come across his name before. Our informant told us that he had been born in Cornwall, and thought that he had been involved with the establishment of the Royal Academy. He was born at Trevallas between St Agnes and Perranporth, both of which are not far from Trerice. At an early age, his artistic talents became evident, but his father, a carpenter, wanted John to become a carpenter. A physician, Dr Wolcot, met him at the place where he was an apprentice, and reecognising John’s artistic skills, paid for him to be released from his apprenticeship. Wolcot encouraged Opie, and by the start of the 1790s, he was a successful portraitist in Cornwall.

In 1781, Wolcot took Opie to London, where his works were admired by great artists of the time including Sir Joshua Reynolds, who compared John’s work to that of Caravaggio and Velasquez. A year later, Opie began working independently of Wolcot, who had been supporting him up until then. An acquaintance of Dr Wolcot introduced Opie to the court of King George III. This led to Opie being commissioned to paint portraits of people of high rank in English society and royalty. In 1886, he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy, and in 1805 he was appointed a professor in that esteemed institution.

There are three paintings by Opie hanging on the walls of Trerice house. One is a portrait, and another a self-portrait. The third, which depicts three people playing cards, is a copy of the same picture that can be seen at Petworth house. The version at Trerice is believed to have been painted by Opie and others in his studio. Each of the three people in it have smiles. It is thought that in this painting, Opie was experimenting with the depiction of smiling. Although attractive, this picture is not as attractive as his other two paintings in Trerice.

It is always pleasant to re-visit places, and always exciting to discover something one had missed on earlier trips to that same location. As well as the lovely interiors at Trerice, the gardens surrounding it are always a joy to behold.