Noëlle Griffiths has chosen to work with the painting
‘Ligeia’ acrylic on cotton duck; 244x216cm; 1978 by John
Hoyland (1934-2011)
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| Re-Take Exhibition at Oriel Ynys Môn, Llangefni, September - November 2016 |
POST 7: April 2016
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| STUDIO April 2016 |
I have finished making all the FRAGILE artist’s books and all the
paintings for this project. This includes twelve artist’s books
and nineteen paintings (including two now destroyed).
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| The twelve FRAGILE books |
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| Three FRAGILE books |
The above image shows the two
books which relate to the destroyed paintings and use part of each canvas as
their covers. What is interesting is
that the two paintings which did not work, and were later destroyed, took the
longest time. There comes a point when a
painting cannot be saved.
For each book I have tried to
incorporate different aspects of the creative process of making a painting. I have looked through my notebooks and
included selected notes, sketches and words that relate to each painting. For the Fragile
– Barragan book I used studio paper (often old posters) with the evidence
of paintings painted on top to print text on.
A record of many paintings’ colours, brush marks and spatters. For Fragile
– Enclosed (studio) book I photographed the studio at the time of making
the painting and each day includes a small studio view with three or four words.
Some books do not include any text and
are purely visual. The swipes of colours
used each day are in their own right quite beautiful.
This bringing together of written
and visual notes has been an important part of this project for me. It responds to the film Six Days in September which documents John Hoyland making a
painting in his studio in 1979 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025lrcy
“It’s so fragile an activity making a painting, trying to bring a
painting into the world...” John Hoyland, transcribed quote from the film Six Days in September.
I have called all the books
FRAGILE and refer to the title of each painting alongside. All the books include pages of the colours
painted each day.
Five books have soft covers using
parts of discarded paintings:
Fragile – Large Yellow Painting Selected studio notes
Fragile – Island Departed Selected studio notes
Fragile – Gilardi Tree Selected transcribed quotes by John
Hoyland from the 1979 BBC Arena film ‘Six Days in September’
Fragile – Enclosed Tree no text
Fragile – December Tree no text
Five books have hard covers using
a deep pink fabric:
Fragile - Barragán I & II Selected studio notes
Fragile – Barragán Pool I & II Selected studio notes
Fragile - Gálvez Pool I & II Selected studio notes
Fragile – Enclosed
Studio Studio photographs and words
Fragile –
Studio Studio
photographs, no text
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| FRAGILE Barragan book |
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| FRAGILE Enclosed book |
One book is not bound, as I would
like to exhibit the pages on the wall grouped together. The painted and printed pages are contained
in a folio which is covered with the deep pink fabric:
Fragile –
Agosto I – IV Selected sketches with
date, time and temperature notes
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| FRAGILE Agosto folio |
One book is painted with printed
text within a Chinese folding book (as part of a group exhibition):
Fragile – Gilardi Tree II Selected transcribed quotes by John
Hoyland from the 1979 BBC Arena film ‘Six Days in September’
At the beginning of this project I stated that I wanted to
explore:
The creative process. How do we make paintings and why?
I have found the process of
recording colours used for each painting quite revealing. In these paintings I wanted to create thin
layers of acrylic paint, on paper and canvas, which remained transparent for as
long as possible. Although I did not
want to keep the light, warm colours in the painting for long, I found that
these were often the starting colours.
To use dull or dark colours meant I would lose the quality of the
unprimed canvas or paper too quickly. I
would not be able to keep the colour light or bright if I chose to do so as the
painting progressed. The colour swipes
record how some days I used lots of colours and lots of changes, whilst other
days I seemed to use very close colours with shifting tones. It
also became evident that paintings often worked less well the longer I spent
painting. Some paintings revealed
themselves quite quickly, and the important thing was to know when to stop and
have time to consider where to go next.
Time : 1982 - 2015. I have spent time looking back over work that
I had kept since art school. I digitally
photographed a lot of paintings that had only been recorded on 35mm slides, and
in the process discarded unwanted paintings from their stretchers.
It has been interesting to look
back to when I started painting and see how my work has developed since my time
at art school.
I have always been interested in
ideas and making visible something experienced or felt. Although I live in the midst of beautiful
landscape I have not chosen to paint the landscape. I have been interested in painting about my
experience of being in the landscape: feelings, memories, moving through the
land, rather than what I saw. Titles
such as Soft Wind, Blue Necklace and Towards Bryn Melyn are from my early years in North Wales after
leaving London in 1985-86.
My paintings have always been
autobiographical and I can easily remember the time and what I was experiencing
when I look at each painting. Earth’s
Blood Burning, Earth Tomb, Searching for my Rural Idyll all come from
1990-91, before I had my two sons.
You can see paintings from 1991
on my website http://www.finca-art.co.uk/gallery.htm and see how my life unfolds through my art.
Looking back I can see how I have
always been drawn to making paintings using thin layers of colour – earlier in
oil paint and about fifteen years ago using acrylic. Although I have flirted with thicker paint
and more expressive mark making, I have always returned to calm areas of
colour.
I started making artist’s books
seriously in 1996, and started making editioned digital books in 2003. I
visited India in 2003 and this experience influenced the way I used colour and
flat space in my paintings. My paintings
became simpler compositionally but still held motifs of reality.
Making books has enabled me to
shift into making art that is almost entirely abstract. In my artist’s books I can still work with
images, reality and a poetic narrative - often using text, photographs or
scanned images. In my books I can
explore ideas that are more tangible and recognisable. This has freed my painting to explore paint,
surface, colour - striving to find harmony, balance and a feeling of
‘rightness’. My paintings are often
still about making visual an experience or feeling.
In recent years I have been
looking at and appreciating artists who when I was at St Martin’s School of Art
I rejected. Artists such as Ben
Nicholson, Victor Pasmore, John Hoyland, Albert Irvin, Gillian Ayres, Jennifer
Durrant, Prunella Clough.
Our mortality and what we leave behind. John
Hoyland died in 2011 aged 77.
What is fashionable in art? When I chose Ligeia by John Hoyland at the National
Museum of Wales in December 2014 both Hoyland paintings were brought out of
store for me to study. A colleague
commented that Hoyland was ‘out of fashion, way off the radar’.
But I am pleased to say that John
Hoyland has had a terrific year!
21 July to 31 August 2014 Hoyland’s 1981 painting
‘Memory Mirror’ has been chosen by the British public for the UK’s biggest and
most democratic art exhibition, Art
Everywhere, which took place on over 30,000 billboards and outdoor sites
across the country from 21 July to 31 August 2014. It was voted the 10th most
popular work on this year’s shortlist, just behind his closest friend Patrick
Caulfield’s work, ‘Pottery’.
The original painting has just
been re-hung and is currently on show to the public at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
8 October 2015 – 3 April 2016 JOHN HOYLAND : POWER STATIONS
(Paintings 1964–1982) A major
exhibition of works by Hoyland is the inaugural show at Damien Hirst’s
newly-built London gallery Newport Street, Newport Street, London
20 November 2015 –
16 January 2016 Pace Gallery, London
showed an exhibition of works by John
Hoyland, Sir Anthony Caro and Kenneth Noland, exploring the friendship and
affinities between the three artists.
The John Hoyland Estate is
represented by Pace Gallery, London (announced 2015)
10 March 2016 Chelsea College of Arts, University of the
Arts, London, hosted an all-day symposium exploring the career of John Hoyland,
entitled Colour, Emotion,
Non-Figuration: John Hoyland Revisited.
“John Hoyland was undoubtedly one of the greatest abstract
painters Britain has produced. For over five decades he made vivid,
life-affirming and startlingly present abstract paintings, never allowing
himself to be restricted to a single style. The current revival of interest in
his art – most notably the exhibition of his paintings from 1964-1982 at Damien
Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery – coincides with a general revival of abstract
painting amongst artists, students and scholars. Now that the certainties of
modernism have dissipated, what lessons can Hoyland’s paintings provide to
young artists today? And conversely what overlooked aspects of these paintings
could be revealed by examining them by the light of today’s attitudes?” from John Hoyland Symposium, Chelsea College of
Arts.
POST 6 February 2016
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| STUDIO 2016 |
I have finished the large canvas Tree and Fragile – Tree book which relates to the colours used to make that
painting. I have chosen to make this book purely visual without text in a
concertina format.
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| Tree painting |
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| Fragile – Tree book |
I have tried to vary the ways I
am binding the pages for the different books.
I am using different papers and different ways to include text. The tactile quality of handling each book is
equally as important as the visual quality.
I have been reading my notes made
at the time of making each painting and deciding what to use in each book. For some books I have used some of my selected
studio notes, for others I have used some of the thumbnail sketches I made at
the time of painting.
Each book records which colours I
have used in the process of each painting.
It has been interesting to see that I tend to start a painting with
light and quite bright colours, some of which are still visible at the end of the
painting. More often than not they are
layered and dulled as I try to find the atmosphere of that particular
painting. Often a painting starts with
an element of reality: whether a
photograph, sketch or something I can see.
But it is the development from this starting point that I find compelling
as I explore composition and the subtle shifts and relationships of colour,
tone and surface.
For the book pages that accompany
the Acehuche I – IV paintings I have
decided not to bind the pages, but to keep them as a folio. This means they can be seen as a series next
to each other, with their studio pages grouped alongside. I have called this folio book Fragile – Agosto.
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| Fragile - Agosto text pages |
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| Fragile - Agosto stripe pages |
I have just started my last painting
for the ReTake/ReInvent series and printed selected words from the ‘Six Days in
September’ film for the book pages. I
have chosen two or three words for each day.
This book will still relate to Hoyland’s transcribed words, but in a
less literal way.
POST 5
Update: November 2015
STUDIO November
2015
Earlier this month I took the
FRAGILE book to the Small Publishers Fair in London. This was displayed on the
artistsbooksonline.com stand along with other books of mine and books by nine
artists from the website.
I was able to visit the
exhibition
JOHN HOYLAND
: POWER STATIONS (Paintings 1964–1982)
8 October, 2015 – 3 April, 2016
This
show marks the opening of Newport Street Gallery in Lambeth, south London, a
major new space which is free to the public.The paintings are all drawn from Damien Hirst’s art collection – known as the Murderme Collection – and span a particularly important period in Hoyland’s career when he was starting to make a name for himself with his first solo museum show at the Whitechapel Gallery (1967). It also covers the time from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s when Hoyland was first engaging with the New York art scene. Curated by Hirst, the exhibition takes the viewer from the vast colour-field works of the 1960s, through the textured surfaces of the 1970s to the more spatially complex paintings of the early 1980s.
It is the first major exhibition of Hoyland’s work since his death in 2011. (from www.johnhoyland.com)
Power Stations exhibition leaflet
The exhibition is on two floors
with 33 large canvases on show. The
gallery is spacious, well lit and a perfect ‘white cube’ to show these
paintings to their best advantage. It is
a fantastic opportunity to see paintings from early in Hoyland’s career up to
and just after the time of ‘Ligiea’, the painting I have chosen from the National
Museum, Cardiff. It is also interesting
that Damien Hirst chose to open his new gallery with John Hoyland. For many of the people coming to the gallery
it will be the first time they have seen Hoyland’s work or a large show of
abstract paintings. Whilst I was there
the gallery was busy with lots of visitors, apparently when it opened there was
a queue outside waiting to come in.
From my notebook: “Huge paintings, very simple, colours that
really zing with edges and backgrounds painted over with strips of other
colours and lots of surface paint. Stained
surfaces often with thicker paint on top – some applied with a brush others
with a wide knife. Some colours are
really close but not quite the same. A
warm orange next to a vibrant orange – really close tonally but creating a
slight and subtle shift. Some paint is
fluorescent and there is a painting which is stained with gold - but this only
becomes obvious when the gold is seen on top of a bold flat colour...
Gallery 5 with six plaster pink
paintings from 1971. Stained background
and almost papier mache spattered areas in the middle (not off edges) as if he
has hurled damp loo roll at the canvas with such force that it has stuck. These do seem fiddly and contrived in
comparison with the cooler more controlled earlier paintings. They are quite fascinating. The thick spatters and shapes, the paint so
thick and the surface contrasting with the stain and glops...
Gallery 6 with seven paintings
from 1979-82. This gallery is so
different – the ordered chaos after the simpler paintings. A progression from the previous gallery. Amidst the many layers and colours each
painting has a strong colour and shape – either one large opaque flat shape and
many other smaller ones; or two or three similar sized shapes of strong colour
and clean flat quality to offset all the surface chaos...”
notebook pages 4-5
notebook pages 6-7
POST 4
Update: October 2015
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| STUDIO October 2015 |
I have been working on a series
of small paintings on paper called Gilardi
Tree and have recorded the colours I used for two artist’s books.
I am continuing to use the
internal spaces of the Mexican architect Luis Barragán as a starting point, and
Gilardi is the name given to a house Barragán designed in Mexico City, 1975-77.
I have just made up two
concertina books that use a selection of transcribed quotes from the 'Six Days
in September' film of John Hoyland in his studio. I have
called the books FRAGILE and use the
transcribed quote "...it is so fragile an activity making a painting,
trying to bring a painting into the world..." as the first quote in each
book.
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| FRAGILE books being assembled |
These books are not for sale, so I am able to use the quotes as 'fair usage'. They are both one-off books, and the copyright page for each includes permission from the John Hoyland Trust and explains the context of the quotes.
One book will be exhibited as part of 'Open Books', an international travelling exhibition of artists using the traditional Chinese folding book in a contemporary way. The exhibition is scheduled for India in 2015 and Canada in 2016. Size of book: 23x12cm closed, 23x284cm open.
For this book I had to take it
apart and divide it in two, so that I could print the text using my A3 digital
printer. I then recorded the colours
used for the Gilardi Tree paintings
with swipes of acrylic paint. After the
paint was dry I re-assembled the book.
The smaller concertina book will be exhibited at the Small Publishers Fair, Conway Hall, London on 6 & 7 November 2015. All books at the fair can be handled by the public. Size of book: 13x12.5cm closed, 13x206cm open.
I have many other book pages ready to make into books, each relevant to paintings. I am considering what text to include for each, possibly using sections from my own notes written at the time of making the relevant paintings, as well as words or short quotes from the John Hoyland film. The purpose of these books is to reflect on the creative process of making a painting, not only on the practical aspects but the thought processes that unfold.
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| FRAGILE Chinese book LH side |
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| FRAGILE concertina book detail |
Post 3: August 2015
I have been working on a series
of paintings that relate to the Re-Take/Re-Invent exhibition since mid January
2015. The first two paintings Island – departed and Large Yellow Painting will get
destroyed as they are not resolved and cannot be saved. I will keep the book pages I made alongside
these paintings and will bind them with text as part of a series of books. This project is about the creative process
and the failures are as important as the paintings that find a conclusion.
...”The bad paintings have to be painted and to the artist these
are more valuable than those paintings later brought before the public.”... Agnes
Martin
Since then I have been working
with geometric shapes, space, colour and tone.
Barragán I & II are named
after Luis Barragán - a Mexican architect who used colour, light and shade to
create architectural spaces both inside and outside of his buildings.
I am in Spain and have set up a
studio in the shade. I can see the
shapes and colours of the porche walls and from this starting point of reality
I want to explore where it will take me and whether I can find a point of
‘rightness’. I am thinking of the ‘Ocean
Park’ series by Richard Diebenkorn which I saw at the Royal Academy in April earlier
this year, and referring to notes and sketches I made at the exhibition.
I am using thin washes of acrylic
paint on 300gsm watercolour paper 130 x 90cm for each painting and each book
page is 30 x 33cm. I want to keep the
acrylic as thin and transparent as possible, building up layers. I am trying not to allow these paintings to
be too busy and to simplify my colour palette as the painting develops.
As with all the paintings for the
Re-Take project, I am making book pages for each day of each painting. It is easy to forget to add the swipe of
colour and sometimes I have to re-mix or dilute what I have left. Often I record the swipe of colour before I
use it in the painting.
I am thinking about the text for
the books, and may use some of my own notes made whilst painting. I want to include some of the transcript of
Hoyland speaking in the film ‘Six Days in September’ and have approached the
John Hoyland Trust for permission.
Earlier this summer I visited the
Agnes Martin exhibition at Tate Modern.
I loved everything about it – it was beautifully hung and her simple use
of colour and repetition was breathtaking in a way that you cannot experience
from reproductions. They are large 6’ x
6’ or small 12” x 12” and do not look much without their scale and subtle
surfaces. I was given a photocopy of
some of Agnes Martin’s ‘Writings’ shortly after I left art school and have
dipped into them over the years. Reading
them now whilst painting Acehuche I, II,
III seems particularly relevant.
...“Seeking awareness of perfection in the mind is called living
the inner life.
It is not necessary for artists to live the inner life.
It is only necessary for them to recognise inspiration or to
represent it.
Our representations of inspiration are far from perfect for
perfection is unobtainable and unattainable.
Moments of awareness of perfection and of inspiration are alike
except that inspirations are often directives to action.
Many people think that if they are attuned to fate, all their
inspirations will lead them toward what they want and need.
But inspiration is really just the guide to the next thing and may be what we call success or failure.
But inspiration is really just the guide to the next thing and may be what we call success or failure.
The bad paintings have to be painted and to the artist these are
more valuable than those paintings later brought before the public.
A work of art is successful when there is a hint of perfection
present – at the slightest hint ... the work is alive.
The life of the work depends upon the observer, according to his
own awareness of perfection and inspiration.
The responsibility of the response to art is not with the
artist.”....
Agnes Martin, from a short essay ‘Reflections’
Post 2 Noëlle Griffiths has chosen to work with the painting
‘Ligeia’ acrylic on cotton duck; 244x216cm;
1978 by John Hoyland (1934-2011)
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| Studio March 2015 |
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.
But it was seeing a film of John Hoyland
painting in his studio that really made the decision to choose his painting for
RE-TAKE/RE-INVENT clear. Made for BBC
Arena in 1979 ‘Six Days in September’ explores the creative process of making a
painting. Hoyland talks in a direct and
honest way, making observations that will resonate with artists who work in the
isolation of their studio.
On Day 3 two friends visit
Hoyland’s studio to look at the painting in progress. One is Bruce Russell, who was head of third
year Painting Department at St Martin’s when I was a student. Bruce was a good tutor and I liked and
respected him, the other man looks familiar but I can’t place him.
It was extraordinary to see Bruce
on the film looking exactly as he looked when he taught me. It really threw me back in time – in the same
way hearing a long forgotten piece of music can transport you almost physically
into the past. ‘Ligeia’ was made at a
similar time to the painting in the film and uses the same diagonal
composition. At the end of the film it
shows ‘Ligeia’ next to the completed ‘Six Days in September’ painting at the exhibition
‘John Hoyland Paintings 1967-1979’ at Mappin Art Gallery in Sheffield in
1979.
In response to John Hoyland’s painting
‘Ligeia’ I am in interested in exploring:
The creative process. How do
we make paintings and why? The
insecurities and questions we ask ourselves. What is more important - the process or the end
result?
I regularly write about work in
progress, making thumbnail sketches in my notebook and analysing the choices
and shifts in direction as I paint. For
RE-TAKE/RE-INVENT I am making a series of paintings, recording the process and
also making an artist’s book for each painting.
Each day I record each of the colours I use, and at the end of this
project I will make a series of unique artist’s books which combine the colour
book pages with text.
Towards the end of his life he made
paintings such as ‘Elegy for Terry Frost (24.9.03)’ and ‘The Golden Traveller’. For an exhibition in 2010 at the Lemon
Street Gallery, “Hoyland described his later work as being darker and more
introspective in mood, which he attributed to his advancing years and the sense
of loss at the passing of old friends. Introspective the images may be but
gentle they are not.” RA magazine.
When Hoyland made the film ‘Six
Days in September’ in 1979 he was 45 years old.
Bruce Russell was 33 and I was 19.
I had just finished my foundation year and was about to start at St
Martin’s.
Now in 2015 Bruce is 69 years old
and retired from teaching. I am 56 and
after teaching art part-time since 1985 I am now starting to think of when I
might stop teaching.
What is fashionable in art? In
the film Hoyland lists the types of art that had, even in 1978, eclipsed
abstract painting – “pop art, optical art, found art, kinetic art, happenings,
land art, conceptual art....think about it art” he adds disdainfully at the end.
Are the paintings of John Hoyland
still out of fashion? The two Hoyland paintings owned by the National Museum of
Wales are both in storage. The newly
curated galleries of Twentieth Century Painting include paintings by Patrick
Heron, Peter Lanyon and the ever popular Gwen John amongst others. But these are also “out of fashion”. What type of paintings are fashionable now? When we visited the National Museum last
December the fashionable art was in the Artes Mundi exhibition on the opposite
side of the Museum. Installation, film, conceptual art – I don’t remember any
painting in it.
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| Pages from Retake Notebook |
Post 1
Noëlle Griffiths has chosen to work with the painting
‘Ligeia’
acrylic on cotton duck; 244x216cm; 1978 by John Hoyland (1934-2011)
Friday 12 December 2014
I leave
Hafod y Llyn listening to owls hooting, dark, pre-dawn.
7am: Oakley Arms is busy, four buses engines
running, people waiting in the dark – a transport hub, a metropolis! – a world
away from my sleeping family up the hill.
7.15am: we set off to Cardiff, Wanda and I with Andrew
driving. We are diverted into Newtown
due to flooding. Swollen rivers, the Wye
with waves like the sea.
11.15am: we arrive at the National Museum of Wales in
time to meet everyone for coffee and bara brith. There are twelve of us at the Museum. Bryony unlocks doors. I wander amongst paintings - the large ‘Ayres
Rock’ painting by Michael Andrews, acrylic on canvas glowing as you enter – I
pass brown traditional portraits, religious paintings, landscapes,
Impressionist gems, Cezanne, Monet, Daumier. Then we go into the closed gallery being
re-hung. Past Gwen John, Sickert in
Venice, many I didn’t have time to look at.
The second gallery alive with 20th Century paintings of
colour and non-realistic subject – Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Karl
Weschke, Ceri Richards, Keith Vaughan, Brenda Chamberlain, Ben Nicholson, Ivon
Hitchens, Adrian Heath, Graham Sutherland.
Time to sketch and look at a few.
Image 2: Noëlle sketching ‘Brown Harbour’ by Terry
Frost at National Museum of Wales, 12.12.14
2pm: we meet by the organ and go into the gallery
where our requested paintings from the storerooms are leaning against the walls
on foam blocks. John Hoyland is
immediately to the right of the door, two small Morandi’s, a large vibrant
graffiti-like Karel Apel, Max Ernst, Gwen John – I spend the limited time we
are allowed looking and analysing ‘Ligeia’ by John Hoyland.
Image 3: Noëlle sketching ‘Ligeia’ by John Hoyland at
National Museum of Wales, 12.12.14
Image 4+: A
selection of notebook pages 1 – 8 analysing colour, tone and composition of
‘Ligeia’ at National Museum of Wales, 12.12.14
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