Noëlle Griffiths has chosen to work with the
painting
‘Ligeia’ acrylic on cotton duck; 244x216cm;
1978 by John Hoyland (1934-2011)
 |
| Studio March 2015 |
I have chosen this painting as a starting
point for the RE-TAKE/RE-INVENT exhibition for the following reasons:
John Hoyland was my external
assessor in 1982 when I graduated from the Painting Department as St Martin’s
School of Art, London. I never met him,
but he was friends with most of the painting tutors and well known as an
artist.
Like many of my fellow students I
reacted against his large ‘macho’ abstract paintings. The exhibition ‘A New Spirit of Painting’ was
hugely influential when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1981, and I was
drawn to emerging artists such as Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia and Julian
Schnabel. I was contextualising my own
work with historical artists such as Paul Gauguin, Franz Marc, Ernest Ludwig
Kirchner, Max Beckmann and I have always loved the paintings by Mark Rothko. Amongst the students was an awareness and
criticism of the male dominated abstract world of painting. We had a diverse range of tutors and visiting
artists, some of the female artists were Jennifer Durrant, Eileen Cooper,
Claire Joy, Tricia Gilman. As students we
talked about how to make paintings that were visibly painted by a woman.
......continued on Noelle Griffith's page
