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Colour is unruly / Winifred Nicholson
Front cover: Summer Days at Lesceave, Cornwall Oil on canvas 100 x 102 cm
ISBN: 978-0-9568906-7-2
Alice Mumford Strategic Colour 11 Sept – 2 Oct 2017 Private View: Sat 9 Sept / 6 – 8pm
Belgrave St Ives 22 Fore Street, St Ives Cornwall TR26 1HE
01736 794888
info@belgravestives.co.uk www.belgravestives.co.uk Follow us on Twitter @belgravestives #artstives
Alice Mumford / Strategic Colour Central to Alice Mumford’s work is its focus on light, for light and its capacity to animate is her predominant concern as a painter. First and foremost a colourist, her eye is keenly attuned to the physical and sensory effects of colour, its chromatic variations and interactions; and to the ways in which the eye makes sense of both objects and space, its comprehension informed by the quality and play of light. The artist’s motifs of still life and landscape stem from her surroundings; the stuff of her everyday life, transformed in paint to conjure something that speaks of both permanence and transience. Her work reflects the seasons. Here, Summer Heat on the Patio, Lesceave, Cornwall summons the optical effects of high summer, the way that motes swim and things appear momentarily to shimmer and dissolve as one narrows one’s gaze as it moves from shadow towards the glare of the sun. Frost and Early Morning Sun is equally though differently dramatic, its raked wintry light causing long bluish shadows whilst making hues in a bowl of fruit sharper. Elsewhere, the drama of light and colour relationships is gentler, more nuanced, particularly in domestic still life arrangements such as The Pink and White Edged Plate and Mirror, in which the interplay between a still life and its reflection creates a picture within a picture, the inflected whites of tablecloth and mirror frame merging the two. Amongst Mumford’s most admired painters are Matisse and Cézanne, though it is with Bonnard that she feels the closest kinship. She sometimes makes painted copies from works by other artists in an attempt to understand them more deeply, and recently made a copy of Bonnard’s The Dining Room at Le Cannet (1932). Subsequently, she recounted how it was only upon realising that she had omitted from her canvas a small patch of blue that Bonnard had painted near to the centre of his tabletop still life that it dawned on her that this was the very thing that held everything in place: “I had pretty much finished the copy, and began to think that the mysteries of how this painting worked were impenetrable. Then I realised I had omitted the small, blue, diagonal rectangle, that adjoins the large orange rectangle in the middle of the canvas. Without this dark blue chip, the structure of the space seemed to fall apart. Not only does it provide a way into the picture, as the point of most contrast, but it also brightens all the whites, oranges and yellow-oranges, creating this incredible bouncing light.”
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We cannot be certain whether Bonnard invented this anchoring fragment, or painted it from a carefully chosen object: it was though clearly fundamental to his pictorial stratagem. And it is insights such as this, into the often-complex architecture of shape and colour involved in picture making, which inform and underpin Mumford’s work. There is for instance a not dissimilar patch of colour to that of the Bonnard in her Summer days at Lesceave; a centrally placed blue-black strip that describes the edge of a dish or book set on a table positioned out of doors, and that marks a point in space between the blacks within a vase of flowers in the foreground and those in a group of shrubs set further back against sea and sky. One realises that here too this ostensibly minor component is fundamental to the creation of pictorial space. This painting and Opening the French Windows, Polgrean – the two largest and most complex canvases here – each consist of a sequence of interconnected interior and exterior spaces, in which a room is bathed in warm light, light which flows through a curtained open doorway that acts as a proscenium linking inside and outside worlds. Working in the studio The artist has said before how important tempo is in her painting, referring to the rhythm and pace of application of pigment to canvas. She employs a wide vocabulary of mark, sometimes put down with deliberative forethought; sometimes more spontaneously, with concentrated speed. In some works one senses the scrabbling of the brush in its quest to pin down a transitory effect, the paint scurried on in impasto or dry-brush. This certainly applies to certain of the small still life canvases shown here, all of them essays in pure painting; Apple Blossom in the Window with The Pink Cup and Bright Lights and White Table Cloth are amongst prime examples. Elsewhere, in works such as the lyrical The Olive Tree in a Cloudless Sky, the handling is softer, more delicate and restrained. Throughout, Mumford elicits an unforced poetry, one that stems from her deep commitment to the craft of painting and a continuing fascination with colour and light.
Dr. Ian Massey July 2017
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Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours. / John Ruskin
The Window Upstairs, Polgrean Oil on canvas 71 x 91 cm
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In nature, light creates the colour. In the picture, colour creates the light. / Hans Hofmann
The Pink and White Edged Plate and Mirror Oil on canvas 61 x 76 cm
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In the studio: still life set-up
The Studio Room with Mirror Oil on canvas 61 x 76 cm
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If one says “red” – the name of colour – and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different. / Josef Albers
The Provençal Jug and Two Yellows Oil on canvas 61 x 76 cm
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Why do two colours, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? / Pablo Picasso
Roses by the Open Door Oil on canvas 25 x 30 cm
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The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which common sense says they ‘really’ have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear. / Bertrand Russell
French Windows and Red Tablecloth Oil on canvas 71 x 91 cm
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Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. / Wassily Kandinsky
Wild Weather, St Ives School of Painting Oil on board 30 x 20 cm
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The artist’s alertness to the colouristic demands of each picture, the ability to respond to the picture’s needs, to feed the colour until its appetite is satiated; these are the true measures of a colourist’s talent. / Wolf Kahn
Olive Tree Shadows, Polgrean Oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm
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Colour helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain. / Henri Matisse
Bright Lights and White Tablecloth Oil on board 20 x 30 cm
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In the studio: still life set-up
Spring Flowers against the Light Oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm
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Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow. / Kahlil Gibran
The Yellow and Striped White Cloth and Lemons in a Glass Bowl Oil on canvas 51 x 61 cm
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Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by colour. / Paul Cézanne
Apple Blossom in the Window with the Pink Cup Oil on canvas 35 x 25 cm
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In the studio: still life set-up
Oranges, Lemons and the Green Glass Jug Oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm
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Colour does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it. / Pierre Bonnard
The Kitchen Table, Polgrean Oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm
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I found I could say things with colours that I couldn’t say in any other way – things that I had no words for. / Georgia O’Keeffe
Summer Heat on the Patio, Lesceave, Cornwall Oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm
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In an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therefore you should make the building… wall which is more distant less defined and bluer… five times as far away, make five times as blue. / Leonardo da Vinci
Opening the French Windows, Polgrean Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm
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Each colour is applied to the canvas in relation to the colours next to it. The painting becomes a living thing and calls out for the colour it wants. / Neil Patterson
Summer’s Day, Lesceave, Cornwall Oil on canvas 60 x 60 cm
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Colour creates, enhances, changes, reveals and establishes the mood of the painting / Kiff Holland
Spring Awakening Oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm
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Colour is so much a matter of direct and immediate perception that any discussion of theory needs to be accompanied by experiments with the colours themselves / Walter Sargent
Cobalt and Violet Blue Shadows Oil on canvas 25 x 30 cm
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The colours live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas. / Edvard Munch
Roses and a Field of Buttercups Oil on canvas 61 x 76 cm
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Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams. / Paul Gauguin
The Emerald Green Cloth Oil on canvas 40 x 40 cm
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All colours arouse specific associative ideas… / Yves Klein
Chair and Two Blues Oil on canvas 25 x 35 cm
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Suffice it to say that black and white are also colours‌ for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red, for instance. / Vincent van Gogh
Frost and Early Morning Sun Oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm
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Working in the studio
Cornowers and the Emerald Green Cloth Oil on canvas 30 x 25 cm
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All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites. / Marc Chagall
Still Life with Bright Lights Oil on board 20 x 30 cm
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He who wishes to become a master of colour must see, feel, and experience each individual colour in its endless combinations with all other colours. / Johannes Itten
Cherry Blossom in Early Morning May Light Oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm
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If one could only catch that true colour of nature – the very thought of it drives me mad. / Andrew Wyeth
The Olive Tree in a Cloudless Sky Oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm
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Painting in process
Orange Juice and Plums Oil on board 20 x 30 cm
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When the colour achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also. / Paul CĂŠzanne
Rosehips in the Studio Window Oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm
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You put down one colour and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody. / Romare Bearden
Lunch Outside with the Indian Tablecloth Oil on canvas 71 x 91 cm
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The chief function of colour should be to serve expression. / Henri Matisse
Late Afternoon, St Ives School of Painting Oil on board 30 x 20 cm
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If you, unknowing, are able to create masterpieces in colour, then unknowledge is your way. But if you are unable to create masterpieces in colour out of your unknowledge, then you ought to look for knowledge / Johannes Itten
Anemones in the Window, Portscatho Oil on canvas 50 x 50 cm
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Alice Mumford RWA Born: 1965 / Columbia
2011
Winter Exhibition: Paintings & 3D Works by 50 Contemporary Artists, Belgrave St Ives
2010
MMXMAS, Belgrave St Ives
2009
Three Representational Painters, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives
2008
Cornish Painting – A Family Quartet, Piers Feetham Gallery, London
2007
St. Ives – Selected Artists, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives
Studied: Falmouth College of Art 1995 Stoneman Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall Camberwell School of Art 1984 –1987 Southwark College of Art and Design 1982 –1984 Dartington Hall 1979 – 1982 Teacher of life drawing and oil painting at St. Ives School of Painting since 2001
Josie Eastwood Fine Art, Winchester
One person exhibitions 2015
Silver Light, Piers Feetham Gallery, London
2015
Colour from Coast to Coast, Belgrave St Ives
A Postcard From St Ives, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives
2013
First Light, Belgrave St Ives
Badcocks at Easter, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn
2011
Taste It, Belgrave St Ives
2008
Jumpy Yellow, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn
2007
Big Family – Still Life, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives
2006
Featured Artist, Caroline Wiseman, London
2006
New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition, The Mall Galleries, London The Cornish Connection, Belgrave Gallery London Places and Spaces, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives Christmas Exhibition, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives
Recent Work, The Great Atlantic Map Works, Falmouth 2005 2005
From St. Ives To Newlyn, Caroline Wiseman, London
Alice Mumford, Belgrave Gallery, London Inner Light, The Great Atlantic Map Works, St. Just Summer and Autumn, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn
2004
Alice Mumford, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn 2004 Intimate Interiors & Favourite Objects, Julian Lax, London
2001
2015
Summer Exhibition, Belgrave St Ives
2014
Summer Exhibition, Belgrave St Ives
2013
Yuletide: Modern & Contemporary Art & Design, St Ives Summer Exhibition, Belgrave St Ives
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St. Ives, The Human Figure and Landscape Julian Lax, London
Cobra and Bellamy, London
Selected mixed exhibitions
The New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2003
Winter Miscellany, Julian Lax, London Rainyday Gallery, Penzance
2002
Aldborough Festival, Piers Feetham Gallery Rainyday Gallery, Penzance
2001
Cobra and Bellamy, London
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I prefer living in colour / David Hockney
Back cover: Two Tables of Flowers Oil on board 30 x 20 cm