Mark Ward - Models and Stages for Paintings

Mark Ward

Mark Ward lives and works in Suffolk. His studio is surrounded by the lush greenery of a tropical garden. He says "From there I can imagine dramas both from exotic lands and also those more local". On a simple homemade stage all the life of field, wetland, forest and savannah is played out by creatures constructed from plastic, felt, paper and string.

Mark paints entirely from observations of these sets, using acrylic to capture the strong lighting and contrasting materials.There are rips and dents but never injury or death. Life is affirmed and even the dung is shiny!

 

 

Green Flowers, Pink Marmite, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100cm

2can, acrylic on canvas, 76 x 76cm

 

The Miniature Show

Some installation views of the exhibition...

(Click on image to enlarge)

Bill Pryde, Mark Godwin, Robin Richmond, Sadie Brockbank

Ed Murray, Albany Wiseman, Lucy Willis

Printmaking Now

Exhibition runs 04 - 25 NOVEMBER 2015   

Printmaking Now brings together four much admired printmakers: Mark Hearld, Andrew Ingamells, Susie Perring & Henrik Simonsen. The work of each artist is distinctly recognisable by their own unique style.

Mark Hearld is inspired by the natural world, and is well known for his uplifting images featuring flora and fauna of the countryside. The influence of artists such as Ravilious and Bawden, much admired by Mark, can be seen in his delightful lithographs. For Printmaking Now, Curwen Gallery is exhibiting some of Hearld's animal prints, including Curwen Menagerie (seen below), an anniversary print celebrating the gallery's 50th birthday.

Mark Hearld, Curwen Menagerie

Susie Perring’s aquatint etchings are also largely nature based; swirling patterns of birds in flight; patterns of reflection and movement in water; fish gliding in dark but richly coloured depths. The medium she uses is perfect for illustrating aspects that cause her most interest; that of colour, light and movement. 

Suzie Perring, In the Shallows

Nature has also always been the first impression for Henrik Simonsen. He observes its ability to 'vary simple forms infinitely' and his process of working reflects this concept. His colourful plantscapes offer a universe of intensities where changing colours and shapes are weaved into the wildly growing vegetation.

Henrik Simonsen, Red Leaves

Andrew Ingamells, in contrast, focuses on buildings of architectural interest and he captures these with stunning amounts of intricate detail. Working with the traditional printing method of aquatint etching which suits his works so perfectly, he continues a tradition of neo classical draughtsmanship made popular by Piranesi. Notable works he has completed include the Basilica San Marco in Venice (seen below), the Duomo di Firenze, the London Inns of Court and every one of Nicholas Hawksmoor's seven London Churches.

 

Andrew Ingamells, Basilica San Marco

Mark Hearld studied illustration at Glasgow College of Art and then an MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art. Commissions include those for Faber & Faber and Tate Museums. Mark's unique collages have been used to illustrate ‘A First Book of Nature’ (Walker Books, 2012.) "Mark Hearld's Work Book" was also published in 2012 (by Merrell).

Andrew Ingamells trained at St Albans School of Art and the London College of Printing before embarking on a career as a graphic designer and illustrator. He has exhibited widely in London including at CCA Galleries, The Grosvenor Gallery and The Royal Academy. His work is held in corporate and public collections including the Tate Gallery, HRH the Prince of Wales, English Heritage, The National Trust, The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, Shell Oil and the City of London Guildhall Library where there was a retrospective of his work.

Suzie Perring went to the London College of Printing in 1963-1967, and then worked as a graphic designer in the 60s and 70s. Since 1984 she has specialised as a printmaker in etchings, both line and aquatint. She has taught print at the LCP and for the Outreach programme of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Education Department and undertaken commissions for complete editions destined for P&O liners: Oriana, The Pride of Rotterdam, The Pride of Hull and Queen Mary 2.

Henrik Simonsen, originally from Denmark, now currently lives and works in the UK. He graduated from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London and Montclaire University, New York. He has had several solo shows including The Royal Opera House and his work has also been commissioned for a public museum collection in Belgium, and selected for international exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles. He has work in numerous private and corporate collections.

It's not just about the paintings!

For their respective exhibitions, both Henry Walsh and Lee Sellers made a window display employing their respective motifs, which both have the versatility to work not just within a painting. For the display Walsh created a flock of birds, a scene common in his more recent work. The birds imply movement, flying across the window pane and upwards. Their journey, however, starts from inside the gallery, from the painting on the wall nearest the window (See Fig.1: After the Rain I), and they continue their flight across the window, then up and away from the gallery, migrating perhaps? Or maybe they're making their way back to another canvas in Walsh's studio up in Derbyshire.

Walsh's window birds

Fig.1, Henry Walsh, After the Rain I

Sellers' signature little figures interact with the letters that spell out his name on the window; sitting in the curve of an 'S', dangling from the corner of an 'L', walking between letters as if they could be stepping stones, or balancing atop them on one leg. Together these little figures create a literal, and joyful, play on words.

Please click on the image to see in full

Sellers also makes great use of the architecture of the gallery space; figures ski down the side of the stairs, or appear to leap off the edge where the banister meets the wall, as if jumping off a coastal cliff into deep water twenty feet below. The construction of the gallery space allows these little figures to come to life, whilst Sellers' offbeat humour allows the gallery to come to life. The banister, for instance, functions as a stage for these little doodles to become narrative scenes, and a dialogue between object and image becomes clear. 

 

















These two artists, who are both good friends, complement each other's work delightfully, and the two exhibitions work very well accompanying each other. As you come to the end of Walsh's work there is a piece, titled 'Steady II' (see Fig.2) depicting workers standing on ladders, reaching out to paint a wall. The painting works wonderfully as an introduction to Sellers' exhibition in the upper gallery. The addition of a plane of colour in the work introduces what is to come upstairs, and the ladders, by their functional purpose, suggest climbing. So up you go to the upper gallery, greeted by little characters along the way. 

Fig.2: Henry Walsh, Steady II

Henry Walsh, 'After the Rain', (in the main gallery) and Lee Sellers, 'The Bright Side of Life', (in the upper gallery) run until October 28th 2015. 

BILL PRYDE: ARTIST INTERVIEW

3 - 30th September 2015, Curwen Gallery, 34 Windmill Street, London, WIT 2JR
Artist Talk 22nd September 7pm in the Upper Gallery.

Bill Pryde is one of the UKs most esteemed screenprinters. His new body of work continues to build upon ideas he began in his 2012 solo show Lonely Churches, Remembered Landscapes with cloisonné interpretations of scenery in Scotland and Suffolk. This element of his work is joined by a new collection of Orchid prints, a return to a subject which Bill first explored over ten years ago.

Robin Spalding and Natalie Suggitt joined Bill in his newly developed studio to discuss the new work…

Curwen Gallery: What have you been trying to achieve with this new body of work?

Bill Pryde: Making work, the physical act of printmaking, gives me the opportunity of creating immediate and particular responses to the world I see around me, when I wake up each morning.  (All this because I wish to be seeing, I think the poet said). I enjoy this.

And this excitement, this energy I suppose, is what inspires me to make the work itself. It is, of course, an expression of my own mood and feelings… and now that I have moved my studio to Suffolk full time, I find myself surrounded daily by the enormous and ever-changing skies and landscape moods of this county, and facing the constant mystery of the sea,  which is not always active, but often quiet, dark, even contemplative, and holding all sorts of secrets and currents underneath. And the marshes, that stretch out towards the sky.

Suffolk, and my native Scotland (which Suffolk reminds me of… the coast east of Edinburgh… same light, similar vegetation etc), demands a response; they are huge and defiant canvases, moody, tranquil yet full of force.

I wanted to explore new, more painterly techniques in my recent monoprints (these mean I only get to do things once, which I find very freeing; if it works an idea can be further developed, sometimes spoilt of course! But, as in painting, there can be a similar spontaneity in monoprinting; things can be covered over, over-printed, though unlike painting, not removed to start again.

I also wanted to produce some strong and dynamic work that had a spring in its step, and asked to be looked at. Recently my attention was drawn to the £5 orchids at my local Tesco, with their delicate, old and spindly stalks, suddenly producing an outrageous and youthful flurry of flowers … and I thought, “I’d like to make that”.

I have my own aches and pains (I’ve just celebrated my 64th birthday) and keep pushing myself... so perhaps in this way the Orchids are a touch autobiographical… but isn’t everything really??

Bill Pryde, Landscape I

Monoprint, 60 x 63cm, £400

Curwen Gallery: You generally only produce small editions and monoprints, and because your prints are often unique I feel like much of your work is closer, in terms of material significance, to painting than printmaking. Why is it that you mostly produce single prints?

BP: Hand producing large editions of work can be very punishing…. and I’ve found you can never get the size of edition right! If you make 20 of something, the odds are that you’ll only sell three and they’ll end up in the back of a drawer… And it’s always good to have people wanting more. I’ve found that if you put a big editioned piece into the RA (where I’ve always sold out) it won’t get in…Sod’s law really….

It’s the immediacy of the process  and technique at one remove that attracts me to printmaking, the rules and disciplines, there to be understood, and sometimes broken. There is a great satisfaction in creating colour and contrasts that have a real temperature. It is only ink on paper after all… but an image can have its own clarity and definition, its own edge and shape.

I applaud the democracy of the reproductive qualities of printmaking, but for now I like the idea of a one-off, individual moment, captured there and then… and finding a good home of its own (On a wall near you).

Curwen Gallery: How do you feel that this new body of work has moved on since your last show, Suffolk Churches…?

BP: My last Curwen show was themed. You asked me to do a new show so I gave myself a project and then documented it. Also it was for the smaller upper gallery and I wanted the work to work well in the space.

I am lucky enough to have done a fair bit of travelling, and like many travellers am always drawn to local churches, especialky the lonely ones, all on their own in the middle of nowhere. Scotland, Suffolk, Iceland, Lanzarote… four of my favourite haunts. So draw and then print. The prints were quite detailed, small scale but complicated, very precise. The new work is much freer, perhaps more ambitious.

Curwen Gallery: You’ve said before that you take a lot of inspiration from the Scottish colourists. What parts of your work do you feel continue their ideas?

BP: Coming from Edinburgh I was aware of the Scottish Colourist tradition from quite a young age, though mainly through reproductions I might add! The Colourists were a confident group of associated artists, who got themselves away from the grey mornings of Edinburgh city life and were dazzled by the dynamic and enthusiastic reach of colour and harmonies that they saw, mainly in France, growing out of Fauvism. We Scots like colour in our homes, insist on it, I think. It can be dreich outside… and cold. These painters and printmakers, and many other  of their ilk, bring excitement and energy into more set situations… decorative, often domestic - pleasing, joyful…. anything wrong with that?

Curwen Gallery: How do you feel that continuing their motivations in screenprinting rather than painting has changed the way that the work is understood? Do you feel that you move with the tradition and how do you update their ideas for a contemporary audience?

BP: There are some fantastic Scottish printmakers, very contemporary and dynamic, making work in Glasgow and Edinburgh and particularly I think in Dundee, currently. Yes, this is part of a tradition. Scots like tradition, and history, though it might not be fashionable to say so in England.

I think that printmaking by definition has to be aware of its own international tradition. We have great examples of 20^th Century printmaking everywhere, Germany in the first half of the last century, America in the second half.  I’ve been lucky enough to work in Indi and see how screenprinting is only now finding an artistic credibility there, in the face of digital work too.

The language of printmaking has many individual accents, but perhaps one tongue.

Curwen Gallery: You mentioned that you are thinking of opening your new studio as a teaching establishment- what were your plans for this?

BP: As I’ve mentioned, printmaking is by definition a very democratic and collaborative art form… Equipment is often shared and you can be inspired and challenged by other people making work around you… It can help you raise your game. Printmakers muck in, but there are rules to be learnt, and techniques and shortcuts to find out about too. I think printmakers are generous with their knowledge. It could be very satisfying, and instructive for me to be able to introduce other artists to screenprinting, and see where they can take it. The idea of teaching short courses allows me to encourage people to make something of their own, with a bit of technical help perhaps… but their own choices, their own ambitions.  To make something of their own, they might take themselves by surprise. This could be fun I hope…

Curwen Gallery: How did your time studying for your MA at Camberwell change how you thought about and produced your work?

BP: I studied at Byam Shaw – small, intimate, encouraging. Then my MA at Camberwell - large, challenging, competitive in the best sense. I learnt techniques from the staff, was able to make work quickly, and learn, gaining knowledge from my younger fellow students, but gaining the confidence to follow my own instincts, and learn to be confident enough to have ambitions.

Curwen Gallery: What has been your career trajectory? Which exhibitions and opportunities do you think have particularly helped you?

BP: After thirty years work in theatre and television as a director, where my job was to get the best out of other people, my job now is to get the best out of myself. Making my own work for the first time, being only answerable to myself is very freeing. Of course it takes a bit of nerve. But I suppose I am just happy to have the opportunity to make the work, to express what I feel about things… and without words, that’s quite freeing!

As a result of my Graduate show at Camberwell I was asked to show work by three galleries afterwards, including the Curwen with your own Graduate Show. (Long may its tradition continue). This has been followed by I think four or five solo shows with the Curwen, and in the past I have done well at the RA Summer Shows, though have recently not put work in for consideration. Immediately after college I joined East London Printmakers and had five or so very happy years there, with many group shows, before setting up a first studio of my own.

Other showing highlights have been in Edinburgh (at the Dundas St Gallery, and more recently at Bonhams), in Kolkatta, at the Nehru Centre in London, in Aldeburgh and in Saxmundham, Suffolk.

Curwen Gallery: Which artists would you consider to be your main inspirations?

BP: All artists inspire me, and musicians, and film makers… and gardeners! I feel Scottish and British… but the English landscape tradition in printmaking is particularly strong. In the last century…Piper, the Nashes, Ravillious, Bawden…also Hockney, Caulfield, Bert Irwin, and then across the water we’ve got Warhol, and the West and East Coast American artists from Ellsworth Kelly to Milton Avery… Big minds, big countryside!

There’s so much wonderful work out there. I’m grateful I was able to discover it all when I was 50 (I was too busy doing words before). This has been like learning a new language, and hearing voices I’d never noticed before.

Curwen Gallery: What is it about the Suffolk/ Scottish landscape which particularly captures your imagination?

BP: The landscape speaks and sings. The author, the artist, the composer observes and attempts to capture a moment.

Curwen Gallery: We are particularly keen on your new still life works. How do you feel that you make this old painterly tradition relevant to a contemporary audience?

BP: Still Life… well the  name says it all. It’s Still… Life… I don’t attempt to represent anything, rather I hope to respond to it… its shape, its form… an object is a landscape, as much as a landscape can be seen as an object.

Look .See. Respond. Draw. Make. Enjoy. What more can I say..!!?

Bill Pryde, Orchid Duo - Turqouise

Monoprint, 74 x 58cm £500

Bill Pryde's Landscapes and Orchids is currently showing in Curwen's upper gallery till 30th September 2015, open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm (Thursday 10am-8pm) and on Saturdays from 11am-5pm. You can view some of Bill's work at the Curwen Gallery website by following this link. 

There is an Artist Talk on Tuesday 22nd September at 7pm in the exhibition space, where Bill will be speaking about his work and answering questions. We hope to see you there!

Landscapes & Orchids: Studio Visit to Bill Pryde in Advance of his September Exhibition

Bill Pryde in his studio

Yesterday Robin and Natalie took a trip to Saxmundham to visit screen-printer Bill Pryde in his new studio.

Bill Pryde outside his idyllic new studio in Saxmundham

The aim of the visit was to choose work for Bill's upcoming show with us in September and to find out a little bit more about what he has been making in recent months.

Studio Interior- Downstairs

The new collection of prints focuses on both the landscapes of his native Scotland and his new home environment in and around Suffolk.

Bill Pryde, 'Day Loch', screenprint

With this new body of work he aims to capture the spirit of the location, recording a "non-representational, poetic response to the mood and moment of a place."

Bill at his print bed with a new print, surrounded by older works (behind,framed)

He sees walking in nature to be of essential importance to his work, breaking the long periods in the studio with regular trips to the sea or marshes nearby.

One of Bill's new, more painterly landscape prints

These walks are not specifically for inspiration, more to encourage a moment of tranquility to allow his creativity to return after his often physically exhausting printmaking sessions.

Much of Bill's inspiration comes from working in his beautiful new garden

The recent move to Suffolk has had a large impact on his practice, affecting his pallette and moving his landscapes away from his characteristic style of 'cloisonnism' to softer, more painterly printmaking.

Choosing some of the new Orchid prints for framing

Alongside these new landscapes we were pleased to see Bill was keeping up with his much loved still-life's - this time returning to Orchids as a subject for the first time in ten years.

Bill Pryde with his dog Bunny

We had a wonderful, uplifting day with Bill, seeing his new home and work space and, most importantly, seeing his new prints. A lot has changed in his practice since his 2012  show "Lonely Churches and Remembered Landscapes" and with these developments come exciting new challenges for the established artist.