Some interesting articles, exhibitions and thoughts on all things art and design this week:
An exhibition that I would love to be able to see, at the MoMA museum, is simply titled Cézanne Drawing, as in Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), a very neutral title for the show featuring an exploration of his drawings, using paint to build up studies and still life drawings, exploring drawing portraits of loved ones and so on. The drawings have a sense of lightness of touch, of freedom and time spent just exploring the process, shapes and lines.
This wonderful essay/article from Two Coats of Paint features lovely nuggets of information on Cézanne's life and how his work came to be without being too pretentious and filled with jargon. The essay is writen by Laurie Fendrich, also a painter who brings some clear insight of his work into the text. Well written, lovely painters, nibbles of information and some lovely images of his drawings, what more could you ask for?
Well I would love to be able to see the exhibition, but Covid, newborn baby, life...the internet will have to be my lens for looking at art for now.
Some beautiful paintings/drawings that are full of flurries of colour, pastels and paint strokes, speak of vast windy days in the country or on rivers and lakes, fitting not so neatly into landscapes, but also crossing borders into abstraction and expression. The painter Ashley Garretts really brings out the wild weather in her landscape drawings and paintings. Really love her work too.
Sculpture, plus colour, fluidity and of course that beautiful and strange substance and material called resin, all feature in the work of Ben Godward. Again I found his work from a Two Coats of Paint article/post. Jonathan Stevenson's comparison of Godward's sculptures to ice pops and giant sweets is just awesome!
Yet again such an energetic feel to the work, and a sense of whimsy and childish delight and fun with a brand new pack of felt tips of crayons. I love the way he fixes translucent layers of colour with each other, building up layers in a way that makes me think of gesture painters, abstract expressionism, mark making and colour explored, action painting especially seems to have maybe inspired this sculpture artist, his works are very physical, and many full of motion too. Again, another artist whose work really needs to be explored and discovered up close. His work from the exhibition at the Slag Gallery, reminds me of the beautiful crystals you would find in a computer game, crystals that make up a digital landscape, or indeed need to be collected by a spunky and amusing Bandicoot with a fruit bazooka.
Lastly Antoine’s Organ by Rashid Johnson, highlighted by a post on Two Coats yet again (they always have the good stuff), is one that begs to be seen up close, to be wandered around, to go up close and photograph from angles, to look from a distance, from high above in a birds eye view way too. Reminds me of the botanical gardens in Edinburgh and brilliant greenhouses stuffed full and filled with green plants, light and life.
