VAL ARCHER. TOUCHING THE SURFACE OF TIME 2011 by Chris Beetles

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VAL ARCHER TOUCHING THE SURFACE OF TIME CHRIS BEETLES LTD 2011

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com

www.chrisbeetles.com

9 781905 738335

VAL ARCHER Touching the surface of time

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Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2011 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com IBSN 978-1-905738-33-5 Catalogue in publication data is available from the British Library Edited by Fiona Nickerson Design by Jeremy Brook of Graphic Ideas Photography by Julian Huxley-Parlour Colour separation and printing by The Midas Press Front cover: Mele Cotogna [79] Front endpaper: Lost Eggs [56] Left: Circoli [33] Title page: Drago [55] Back endpaper: Cityscape [18] Back cover: Disegno [26]

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VAL ARCHER Touching the surface of time

2011 Chris Beetles Gallery

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Eating with your eyes An appreciation of Val Archer by Simon Bainbridge A wit once remarked that we read Anatole France to see what Anatole France has been reading – an epigram which must have had more bite when people did actually read that forgotten man of letters. The criticisms implicit in this barb are numerous and range from ill-digested influences through lack of a consistent personal style all the way to outright plagiarism. How different things are in the world of art; for if we say that we look at Val Archer’s paintings to see what Val Archer has been looking at, we are doing no more than stating an obvious truth. For as long as she has been showing her work to the public, which is now almost forty years, she has been offering the fruits of her observation – and the word ‘fruits’ is not carelessly chosen, as the most casual glance at this new collection will show. The images she has presented have always been meticulously painted, generously coloured and deeply attentive to the form and texture of her subjects. Her new paintings display these qualities as beguilingly as ever: look at the contrast in textures of lace, tile, fruit and stone in Merletto [88], for example, or the sumptuous palette of the floor of Spoleto Cathedral in Prospettiva [40]. What enables her to create these beautiful images is no secret. Allied to consummate technical skill is a way of looking, an intensity of observation that is the gift of a very few. ‘I’ve always loved looking at things,’ she has said. ‘It’s like eating things with your eyes.’ So, what has Val Archer been looking at? She describes elsewhere in this catalogue her experience of painting mosaics as the background to some Puglian almonds and of then becoming so interested in the range of colours and textures in the mosaics that they became a subject in themselves. This led to an interest in earlier mosaics and other ancient forms of decoration, including the wall-paintings of Pompeii, and prepared her to be overwhelmed by the marble floor in Spoleto. A recommendation from a friend led to the next revelation, the marble inlay work known as ‘Cosmatesque’ which is a glory of many of Rome’s finest churches. She describes well the appeal of mosaics and decorative stonework for a painter and the associations they give rise to, but it is worth adding that there is tremendous appeal in mosaic work for the ordinary observer also. Mosaic’s ability to survive and, in particular, to retain its colour over the centuries offers a more direct sight of a vanished world than practically any other survival. Nothing in this world is permanent, of course, but a work of art that can retain its physical integrity more or less unscathed for over two thousand years offers a version of permanence that will do for most of us.

It must be significant that, for the most part, Val Archer has combined these glorious survivors with objects that are beautiful but ephemeral. Butterflies cluster on a Cosmatesque wall in Cosmati: Farfalle [44]; a white feather is wittingly juxtaposed to a mosaic bird in Cygnet [54]; and as ever all the fruit she paints is captured at its brief moment of perfection – we just know it won’t look as good tomorrow. The survival of ancient mosaics and Roman wall-paintings gains an extra resonance from their having been hidden for so long. The magnificent mosaics of Libya were obscured for centuries by the desert sands as thoroughly as the Vesuvial ash, lapilli and pumice buried Pompeii, but what initially destroyed has, over the years, also preserved. The work of ancient craftsmen is linked to the marble inlay of the Cosmati by more than just a shared beauty and a deft handling of potentially intractable materials, and the link adds a twist to the idea of an art form that endures; for the marble that the Cosmati used was itself ancient Roman material, often fragments or whole columns which had come to light during building work in the expanding mediaeval city. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Cosmatesque art was flourishing, Romans were conscious of the history of their city and welcomed visible connections to their past. The most obvious example of this is the recycling of ancient columns by placing them along the naves of Rome’s mediaeval churches, but such columns could also be sliced to provide the coloured discs which are a regular element in Cosmatesque floor patterns. The Cosmati took a special pride in creating their work because they believed that their glorious decorative schemes were creating colourful interiors which surpassed anything their ancient predecessors had achieved. This belief was not proved wrong until the discovery of Nero’s Domus Aurea in Roma late in the fifteenth century, which revealed for the first time the nature of ancient Roman interiors; and the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii in the eighteenth century had an even greater impact. These later revelations do nothing, of course, to diminish the achievement of the Cosmati. Close study of these paintings of mosaics should arouse an admiration for the mosaicist just as much as for the painter. It also sharpens our awareness of which subjects mosaic is particularly suited to depict. The skin of a fish, built up from scales, lends itself perfectly to mosaic technique, as paintings like Shoal [05] and Triglia [06] demonstrate. The plumage of a bird is built up in layers rather than sections, but that is another effect that mosaic can capture: consider Wood Birds [50] or the

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ducks in Anatre [51]. When mosaic is used only as a background it can still make us notice things. In the glowing gold and yellow world of Frutta [63], for example, the segmented nature of the mosaic is echoed by the skin of the pineapple and by the fractured reflections of the fruit in the polygonal bowls: a similar effect, with a more muted colour palette, can be seen in Conchiglie [03]. A non-representational skill of the mosaicist which Val Archer has captured is the way the potentially sombre black-and-white mosaic of the Vatican’s Hall of the Animals (in Lost Eggs [56], for example) is relieved of severity by the fluidity of the pattern: there is not a straight line to be seen. The Cosmati made use of a greater range of shapes than the simple squares of the ancient mosaicists – circles, diamonds, oblongs, triangles – and these too find an echo here, particularly the triangles: look carefully at the butterflies in Apricots [86] and Cosmati: Farfalle [44] and the shapes which make up both their patternings and the Cosmatesque decoration.

There is much in this catalogue that will strike admirers of Val Archer’s paintings as new and different, but it is worth thinking also about what is consistent and familiar. In an interview in 1983 she said, ‘I like to use a high eye level so that I can spread the objects out’: that high eye level is still her preferred viewpoint and the objects are still carefully spaced. The absence of people from her work used to be much commented upon, and she once explained this by saying that she felt she could not paint people ‘without making them appear less than they really are’ (she felt the same about landscape). People are still absent from her work, and if we now feel the absence less keenly it is because in this new work she is less often painting objects which imply the proximity of people – clothes, prepared food, an open book. Her interest in painting the art of previous centuries, which receives such magnificent expression in this exhibition, can be traced back further than one might imagine, at least as far as the early 1980s. In the book, The Male Nude (Phaidon, 1985), three of her paintings are reproduced, of which two hint at this future interest: Elgin includes a postcard of a figure from the Elgin Marbles and Torso II shows us a marble carving strongly reminiscent of a Corinthian capital. Most intriguingly of all, her 2001 exhibition at the Chris Beetles Gallery included a picture called Casale (no 9 in that exhibition’s catalogue), which depicts in the foreground an urn, a pot of pansies and a pear: painted on the wall in the background is a loosely draped, bare-chested figure from classical antiquity playing an aulos, an ancient Greek wind instrument. Casale irresistibly brings mosaics to mind, because Villa Casale in Sicily is an archaeological site famous for its mosaics of the fourth century AD. It was partly in order to see Villa Casale that Val Archer went to Sicily in the spring of 2010, but unfortunately the ash cloud descended and she had to leave without visiting the site.

People’s reactions to these mosaics differ widely (Kenneth Clark, for instance, deemed them ‘vulgarities’) and we must hope that her reaction is not delayed much longer. From the time of her first appearance, Val Archer has been spoken of as a realist painter. The term has never described her adequately and it is possible that it was only originally applied because ‘figurative’ was a difficult word to use in artistic circles at the time. Certainly, she has never painted the gritty scenes of everyday life that the term often implies: in fact, quite to the contrary, her images are so immaculate that they can take on an air of mystery and otherworldliness. The randomness of the objects she paints and the settings she devises for them have never approached surrealism, though it can be said that in this exhibition there are examples of normality being pleasantly warped. Whose eggs are they exactly in Lost Eggs [56]? That slightly frantic high-stepping bird’s? And in Wild Cherries [71] are the mosaic cherries coming to life or are the real cherries being petrified? Quite possibly, Val Archer is a magic realist, to use a term that art criticism has ceded to literature for too long. But even this useful term gives no hint of what is perhaps her greatest and most attractive quality, the air of celebration that pervades her work. Everything she paints she paints because she finds it beautiful, and she celebrates its beauty by placing it before us in as perfect a form as she can. We can all appreciate beauty, but we cannot all celebrate it as compellingly as this, so we join in with her. In a leisured society such as ours we share the pleasure of things like good food, flowers, a beautiful bowl, rich fabrics, which we have seen when travelling. It is Val Archer’s gift to be able to show us that there is even more beauty in them than we thought. Last year’s abbreviated visit to Sicily did at least allow some days in Palermo. To speak to Val Archer about the extravagance of Sicilian Baroque is to find an artist in the grip of a new passion. Clearly, her eyes are still hungry.

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Val Archer A brief biography by Simon Bainbridge Val Archer was born in Northampton and was educated there at the High School for Girls. While still at school, she attended Henry Bird’s drawing classes on Saturday mornings at Northampton School of Art. A painter of the old school, Bird was helpful and encouraging: as useful and illuminating as his rigorous approach to life drawing was his knowledgeable passion for the Italian masters. Already a compulsive worker, Archer would typically spend the rest of her weekend painting, either outside or back at home, sharing the kitchen table while her mother cooked. In 1964, Val Archer left Northampton to study at Manchester College of Art and Design. For her, at this time, this was the ideal environment and she still speaks warmly of the stimulation and instruction she received. A wide-ranging pre-diploma year, during which she particularly enjoyed the sculpture, was followed by a three-year painting course. Norman Adams was head of painting, teaching by example rather than instruction, and the majority of the staff were young and energetic artists at the beginning of their careers. Art history was taught; a liberal studies course introduced unfamiliar music and ideas; and for the first time, Archer encountered contemporary art from the USA, finding herself most drawn to the Pop artists and those moving away from Abstract Expressionism – Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg. A very different but equally profound enthusiasm formed at this time was for Pierre Bonnard: the Royal Academy’s exhibition devoted to him in 1966 made a lasting impression. Val Archer graduated from Manchester in 1968 and, feeling she ‘needed more time’, moved to London to study painting at the Royal College of Art. Here she found a very different atmosphere: some of the teachers maintained a distant attitude to the students and not all of them encouraged an interest in contemporary American art. Despite this, she made several trips to the USA in the late Sixties and early Seventies, principally to New York. An offer of representation by a New York gallery raised the possibility of making a career there, but she decided to return to the UK. Back in London, themes and subjects began to appear which would feature in her work for many years. The most important of these was a fascination with painting textiles – in particular, the landscape-like forms they assume when draped or folded. She graduated from the RCA in 1971, winning the Anstruther Prize for Painting. Life after college began with a flat in a mansion block in Brixton, which had space for a studio, and a job with a printer

in Streatham. An opportunity to show her work soon arose: the gallery-owner Basil Jacobs had seen her paintings at the RCA and displayed some in his Bruton Street gallery in 1972-73. Her first solo show came soon after, in Stuttgart in 1975. This was a success, and her time in Germany was made memorable also by her discovery of Otto Dix and a visit to Colmar to see Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece. There were further solo shows in Europe: at Robert Noortman in Maastricht, in 1989 and 1990. In the UK she exhibited with Fischer Fine Art from 1979 to 1981, and from 1993 to 1997 with Christie’s Contemporary Art in London and elsewhere. Her work was represented in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1993, 1995 and 2003. In 1998 she had her first solo exhibition at the Chris Beetles Gallery and has shown there regularly ever since. For most of the 1970s and 1980s Val Archer combined painting with teaching. She is characteristically modest about this. ‘It used to worry me’, she says. ‘I used to worry I wasn’t good enough’. Nevertheless, she enjoyed a long association with Sheffield College of Art, which led to her Stuttgart exhibition, and has taught at Wolverhampton and Lanchester Polytechnics and Winchester, Cheltenham, Cardiff and Goldsmiths’ College Schools of Art. Since 1990 Val Archer’s name has become known to a wider public through her work in newspapers, magazines and books. For three years her paintings accompanied food and cookery articles in the Sunday Telegraph and the BBC Good Food magazine. Two books on fruit appeared in 1993 and 1994, and she also illustrated one of Nigel Slater’s early cookery books. Her most recent publication is The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina, a collaboration with the Italian cookery writer Anna del Conte which explores the culinary traditions of six regions of Italy. Travel has long been a pleasure and a source of inspiration for her: in recent years she has tended to stay close to the Mediterranean. In 1999, after a visit to the painter Joe Tilson in Tuscany, she bought a house and studio nearby and she now paints both there and at her home in Clapham. Her studios are spacious and beautiful, the workspace of someone who values order and efficiency. Apart from the tools of her trade they contain little – minimal furniture, some books, a small collection of objects which may become subjects. She likes to have music playing as she paints and begrudges time spent away from her work. Looking back at her childhood she says, ‘I always painted’, and she probably always will.

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Visual Games A statement by Val Archer The first time I painted a mosaic it was used as a background in a painting of almonds, for a book I was working on with Italian food writer Anna del Conte called The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina. We visited six regions of Italy together and discovered the produce and recipes specific to each area. In Puglia, one subject was the special almonds produced there; its duomo contained the most marvellous pavement, a mosaic from the twelfth century. One section of it depicted the farming year, each month represented by a typical country task. I chose the month of September with its illustration of an olive harvest, as a background for a basket (also from Puglia) containing almonds. It was fascinating to paint a very complicated flat narrative background and then add a simple three-dimensional image. I used more months of the year for other paintings and then an image of a mermaid from the same pavement with a large bowl of cherries.

Pompeii was virtually deserted on the day I was there and I became totally engaged in its streets and houses, in the imagined lives revealed by the scars and scratches on its gorgeous surfaces. At that time the wall frescoes exerted as big a pull for me as the mosaics, their partial destruction adding another aesthetic level. Naples itself was in a similar state of picturesque neglect, a condition appreciated by many painters before me. While I was in Naples I photographed and sketched details from the museum collection, from Herculaneum and mainly Pompeii. On returning to my studio I first worked on a number of paintings about the frescoes I had seen, playing with the shallow space of their cracked surfaces and placing other three-dimensional objects like keys and brushes on them [37-39]. I didn’t want to challenge the almost trompe l’oeil effect I’d created in some of them by including anything round and solid or too highly coloured. Near my studio in Italy there is an amazing view over the Valdichiana on the road into Cortona; it stretches, this great flat valley, for miles to the distance hills of Montepulciano and Monte Amiata. It doesn’t take much imagination to make the connection between its fields and rivers, delineating roads and punctuating cypresses, to the geometric mosaic patterns on the floors of Pompeii [Landscapes, page 20]. I was looking at Sienese painters at the time and found in them, particularly Giovanni di Paolo and Sassetta, a similar reaction to those Tuscan hills. I hadn’t painted landscape for years, always concentrating on still life, wanting to paint the tactile and sensual sensations of the downy skin of a peach, the swollen shine of a cherry.

After a year, when I focussed on painting food for this book, it was a delight to work on (what I thought) would be new backgrounds for still lives. I painted mosaics and textured wall surfaces with remnants of frescoes still attached, becoming interested in their three-dimensional quality, and in the infinite range of colours in the stone, marble and ceramic tesserae. They started to feel complete in themselves, the addition of other objects rather a distraction. But I did need more source material, so planned a visit to Pompeii to study the wall paintings and mosaic floors both in situ and at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples.

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But, once I was in Italy, in the hills, I was increasingly thrilled by the countryside, especially living and working high up, with the land of counterpane stretched out beneath me. I remembered paintings I’d done years ago, where folds of material became hills and valleys, the bottom sheet of my bed transforming itself into an endless sandy beach from which the sea has just retreated, so leaving the undulating forms of its ripples and eddies. I then followed the tentative start of making mosaic panoramas, by finding further patterns to work from in the Italian cities I visited.

The part that is difficult for me to explain is the way natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake in L’Aquila, and the changes that are happening all the time to landscapes and cityscapes, feed into the work. The way nature always seems to want to claim back its own after endless disruption and change, after thriving communities are reduced to shards and broken tracery, is a further source of ideas.

The first deviation from the square tesserae of Roman mosaics were three paintings I made about the Cosmatesque pavement in the duomo in Spoleto. Four generations of twelfth and thirteenth century craftsmen used triangles and other geometric forms in a variety of different coloured stones and marbles to make abstract patterns on floors, steps, altars and twisting columns. This discovery initiated further research into their work in Rome, in particular in the churches of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, San Giovanni in Laterano, San Clemente and my favourite Santa Maria in Aracoeli.

My visits to Ostia Antica near Rome, the mosaic pavements at Bignor and Fishbourne in Sussex, and especially the Libyan sites of Ptolemais, Sabratha, Tolmeita, Apollonia, Cyrene and Leptis Magna, which I saw just before the February 2011 uprisings started in Libya, have all fed into my work. While visiting archaeological sites, there would always be some even more ephemeral thing blowing across the slowly disintegrating floors – a leaf, a feather, a scrap of paper; I’ve made some paintings including them too, in part to anchor the scale to realism, to work as colour contrast, a change of texture, a complementary pattern and to echo in threedimensions the flat form of the designs. Because the surface of things is so important to me it is crucial that the paintings themselves have a beautiful surface, that the way I apply the paint is in sympathy with the object I am painting, that the choice and mix of colours is a joy. I use pigments from the same source as my subject matter, their names revealing their earthy origins: Terre Verte, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber and Naples Yellow in blends with the exotic Rose Madder, Cobalt Violet, Viridian, Cerulean Blue and Ultramarine.

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The Sea In Classical mythology, Poseidon wooed Amphitrite, a sea nymph. She rode his chariot, or on a dolphin’s back, with an arch of drapery billowing over her head, a feature common to the sea goddesses of antiquity. Triton, who is often portrayed as a merman, was their son.

01 Neptune and Triton signed with initials oil on canvas 21 3⁄4 x 44 inches

‘The marbles are like solid air bubbles’ ‘The Fortuny-like material from Venice echoes the forms of the waves and makes the shapes of a sea creature, the tail of a lobster or claws of a crab’

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02 Triton and Cherries signed with initials oil on board 12 x 8 1â &#x201E;4 inches

03 Conchiglie Shells signed with initials oil on paper 15 x 22 inches The background is from a mosaic at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, an archaeological museum in Rome.

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04 Fish Fragment signed with initials oil on paper 7 3⁄4 x 11 1⁄2 inches

05 Shoal signed with initials oil on paper 18 1⁄2 x 22 inches

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These images of fish are inspired by mosaics in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome.

07 Spigola Sea Bass signed with initials oil on board 7 3â &#x201E;4 x 10 inches

06 Triglia Red Mullet signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 30 inches

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08 Sea Bed signed with initials oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches

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Nos 08-10 were inspired by Roman wall paintings and mosaics of birds, fish, animals and mythological creatures in Pompeii.

‘The undulations of the mosaic reflect the sea bed, and the mosaic is seen as if through the water with refractions of light distorting the surface.’

09 Pallina Marble signed with initials oil on board 10 x 7 3⁄4 inches

10 Blue Feather signed with initials oil on board 5 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄2 inches

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Romans ‘We visited Pompeii in early December and it was deserted, around every corner was another treasure. Persephone’s head was a wall painting partially covered with leaves. The gessoed and frescoed walls, decaying with bits fallen off, the aging surfaces I find so evocative.’

11 Persephone signed with initials oil on board 7 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

The female head in these pictures is taken from a wall painting in the Casa del Bracciale d’Oro, Pompeii.

12 Persephone with Tassel signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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13 The Alchemist signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

‘I don’t know who he is, but I liked him and when I added the old bottles, because I enjoyed their colour and shape and texture, he became the Alchemist.’

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14 Lacrime Tears signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 1⁄2 inches

‘She was so sad and lonely that I wanted to cheer her up. Outside the gates to Pompeii were violently coloured, cheerful vans selling vivid lemons. I put the bright lemon in the picture to amuse her.’

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Landscapes

15 Terremoto Earthquake signed with initials oil on paper 21 3â &#x201E;4 x 28 3â &#x201E;4 inches

The undulating nature of some surviving mosaic pavements has led Val Archer to see them as landscape contours. Terremoto (earthquake), Labirinto (maze), Laghi (lakes) and Cityscape are all inspired by Pompeian mosaics; Vista and Coastal Shelf are inspired by the Roman villa at Fishbourne near Chichester.

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The pavimenti, broken in places, appeared like the streams and contours in the long flat expanses of Valdichiana. The mosaics reminded me of a birds-eye view of the plains.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

16 Labirinto Maze signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 30 inches

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17 Laghi Lakes signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 30 inches

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18 Cityscape signed with initials oil on canvas 26 x 34 inches

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19 Vista signed with initials oil on paper 27 1â &#x201E;2 x 19 3â &#x201E;4 inches

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20 Coastal Shelf signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 30 inches

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Fragments

‘This was the first mosaic piece I did that inspired the rest of the series.’ 21 Tesori Treasures signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

Tesori was inspired by mosaics Val saw in Ravenna. The little box of mother of pearl buttons belonged to Val’s mother.

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22 Penna bianca White feather signed with initials oil on board 15 x 11 inches

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;When looking round sites there is always some feather or leaf floating around. These wind-blown ephemera suggest the passage of time.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

24 Foglia Leaf signed with initials oil on board 8 x 8 inches

23 Mattonelle Tiles signed with initials oil on board 15 x 11 inches

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25 Frieze signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

Nos 25-27 derive from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The striking Disegno (design) is taken from an unusual mosaic pillar.

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‘The appeal of mosaics – uneven surfaces, some stones embedded deeper than others, some pieces broken away leaving little craters – is an organic aging process. And in aging something so forbidding and geometric, a mosaic becomes humanized and vulnerable.’

26 Disegno Design signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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27 Il Frammento The Fragment signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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28 Piastrelle Tiles signed with initials oil on board 15 x 11 inches

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The rich decoration of the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome, which stands on the highest point of the Capitoline Hill, is the source of these next four paintings.

29 Magherita Daisy signed with initials oil on paper 6 x 8 1â &#x201E;4 inches

31 Triangoli Triangles signed with initials oil on paper 9 x 3 1â &#x201E;2 inches

30 Lastra Slab signed with initials oil on paper 8 1â &#x201E;4 x 11 inches

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32 Lettere Letters signed with initials oil on paper 13 1â &#x201E;4 x 5 inches

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33 Circoli Circles signed with initials oil on paper 30 1â &#x201E;4 x 10 1â &#x201E;2 inches

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Nos 33-36 are inspired by mosaics in the British Museum. A tessera is an individual tile in a mosaic; sometimes spelt tessella, it is a Latin word taken from the Greek word for four.

35 Tesserae II signed with initials oil on board 8 1⁄4 x 6 inches

34 Tesserae I signed with initials oil on board 12 x 8 inches

36 Quadretto signed with initials oil on board 11 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄4 inches

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Painted Walls

The walls in all these paintings were taken from those that Val found in Pompeii. The wall in Spazzole is from the Casa del Bracciale d’Oro.

‘There were wonderful selections of rustic brushes in the market of Camucia. They looked like dancers’ skirts and I just liked the shapes of them.’ 37 Spazzole Brushes signed with initials oil on canvas 36 x 30 inches

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38 Chiave Keys signed with initials oil on board 15 x 11 inches

39 Bilancia Scales signed with initials oil on board 15 x 11 inches

‘My Dad’s collection of keys was ideal. I needed interesting objects that took up a shallow space to arrange on the chipped and peeling walls that I loved painting.’

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Cosmatesque A powerful inspiration for Val Archer in recent years has been the geometric marble inlay work known as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Cosmatesqueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, a term deriving from members of a prominent family of Italian craftsmen called Cosmati, who worked from 1190-1235. Mostly used in the construction of church floors, the initial inspiration for the technique was Byzantine. Prospettiva

(perspective) and Pavimento (floor) are images derived from the magnificent marble floor of the cathedral in Spoleto. The decoration in Cosmati: Vestito (garment) and Cosmati: Farfalle (butterflies) comes from St John Lateran in Rome, while the original of Cosmati: Tondo (a tondo is a circular painting or carving) is in the Roman church of San Clemente.

40 Prospettiva Perspective signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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41 Pavimento Floor signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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42 Cosmati: Nodo Knot signed with initals oil on paper 37 x 25 1â &#x201E;4 inches Inspired by the floor in Santa Maria in Aracoeli

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‘I had a white bowl on the table full of apricots and plums and the colours and shapes reminded me of the Cosmatesque floor.’

43 Cosmati: Tondi Rounds signed with initials oil on canvas 30 x 35 3⁄4 inches

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The presence of butterflies in this and other pictures [see also 58 & 59] is a happy accident. During the glorious summer of 2010, Val’s Tuscan studio was invaded by clouds of butterflies blown in by warm gusts of wind.

44 Cosmati: Farfalle Butterflies signed with initials oil on paper 24 3⁄4 x 40 1⁄4 inches

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45 Cosmati:Vestito Garment signed with initials oil on paper 40 1â &#x201E;2 x 26 inches

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Birds â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I love birds, they make me laugh. Mosaics use the imagery of birds, flowers and fruit as an allusion to the real world.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

46 Great Tit signed with initials oil on board 8 x 12 inches

48 Sparrow signed with initials oil on board 8 x 12 inches

47 Roman Robin signed with initials oil on board 8 x 8 inches

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49 Water Lily signed with initials oil on board 24 x 20 inches

No 49 was inspired by a mosaic from the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome.

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50 Wood Birds signed with initials oil on paper 15 x 22 inches

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51 Anatre Ducks signed with initials oil on paper 15 x 21 1â &#x201E;2 inches

Val has inserted her own mosaic ducks into an existing mosaic frame.

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52 Turtle Dove signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

The original of this mosaic can be found in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

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Hall of Animals ‘This mosaic was in a corridor leading into the Hall of Animals and everyone was just tramping over it. I liked its design, the organic rhythm of the swirls and the crispness of the black and white. The birds all appeared to be looking for something.’

53 Uccello Nero Black Bird oil on paper 29 x 21 1⁄4 inches

Nos 54, 56 and 57 are also from the seconnd century AD floor of the atrium in the Sala degli Animali in the Vatican Museums, Rome.

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54 Cygnet signed with initials oil on paper 16 1â &#x201E;4 x 23 inches

55 Drago Dragon signed with initials oil on paper 15 x 22 3â &#x201E;4 inches

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56 Lost Eggs signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 30 inches

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‘The idea of Piscina just fused with something we saw at Herculaneum and the image in the pool is also from the Hall of Animals, of a hawk eating a rabbit.’

57 Piscina Pool signed with initials oil on paper 20 3⁄4 x 30 inches

The fishpond in Piscina is Val Archer’s own invention.

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Lettering

Nos 58-59 are derived from the collection of incised and inscribed stones in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino.

58 Painted Lady signed with initials oil on board 5 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄2 inches

‘It was such a self-contained aubergine, I added the words “Melanzana In Pace”, Aubergine in Peace!’

60 Uccello Bird signed with initials oil on board 7 3⁄4 x 10 inches

59 In Pace In Peace signed with initials oil on board 9 3⁄4 x 7 3⁄4 inches

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61 Quince signed with initials oil on board 10 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄2 inches

‘Inspired by the stones from Urbino, but, these are imaginative pieces, I made the lettering up.’

62 A Peach from Urbino signed with initials oil on board 8 x 5 inches

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Fruit and Vegetables

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I was just playing with shapes and reflections. Segments of the pineapple and the angled walls of the silver dish echo the diamonds in the mosaic.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 63 Frutta Fruit signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

The background is from a mosaic at the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome [see also 03].

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A cedro is a citrus fruit. First known in Italy in the fourth century, cedros are larger than lemons and are now grown mainly for their peel, which is highly perfumed and is very good if candied.

64 Cedro signed with initials oil on paper 17 3â &#x201E;4 x 14 1â &#x201E;2 inches

65 Susine Plums signed with initials oil on paper 15 x 22 inches

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‘I just loved the colour of the wood. The onions were in a market and looked like berries but all in a range of fresco colours.’

66 Cipolle Onions signed with initials oil on paper 16 1⁄2 x 13 1⁄2 inches

67 Ribes rosso Redcurrants signed with initials oil on paper 15 x 22 inches

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68 Clementines signed with initials oil on paper 21 1â &#x201E;2 x 16 inches

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‘It’s a kind of joke because you always have lemon with fish. Lemons also have a fishy shape and the leaves become like fishes; visual games, really.’

69 Limoni Lemons signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 30 inches

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70 Tiger Moth signed with initials oil on board 5 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄2 inches

71 Wild Cherries signed with initials oil on board 7 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

72 Mele piccole Small Apples signed with initials oil on board 7 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

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73 Aubergine signed with initials oil on board 7 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

The background mosaic here is a fragment from St John Lateran in Rome.

75 Mirabelle Plums signed with initials oil on paper 12 x 15 1⁄2 inches

74 Figs signed with initials oil on board 7 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄2 inches

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Peaches and Quinces ‘The lovely downy soft Boucher-like surface of the peaches, there is something fleshy and sensual about them like protected French skin.’

76 Pesche Peaches signed with initials oil on board 11 x 15 inches

77 Saturnine Peaches signed with initials oil on board 11 x 15 inches

This unusually shaped, seemingly squashed peach (sometimes known as a tabacchiera or ‘snuff-box’ peach) is a very sweet variety and comes from the region of Le Marche.

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‘The white peaches looked unearthly. They had no colour in them, just the tiniest blush. They were like they had come from the underworld.’

78 White Peaches signed with initials oil on paper 14 3⁄4 x 21 1⁄2 inches

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79 Mele cotogna Quinces signed with initials oil on paper 11 x 14 1⁄2 inches

80 Cosmati Tile and Peaches signed with initials oil on board 8 1⁄4 x 11 3⁄4 inches

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Bowls

82 Bowl of Wild Cherries signed with initials oil on board 8 x 8 inches 81 Black Cherries signed with initials oil on board 9 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄2 inches

83 Blackcurrants signed with initials oil on board 8 1⁄4 x 12 inches

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‘The wild strawberries and redcurrants were picked from around the studio. I was sidetracked from painting mosaics by the gorgeousness of their colour.’

84 Redcurrants signed with initials oil on board 12 x 8 1⁄4 inches

85 Wild Strawberries signed with initials oil on board 9 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄2 inches

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86 Apricots signed with initials oil on board 15 x 11 inches

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Majolica Tiles Val discovered these faded and fresco-like majolica tiles in a builder’s yard in Monterchi, Tuscany, on her way back from visiting Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto.

87 Majolica Tiles signed with initials oil on canvas 26 x 33 3⁄4 inches

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88 Merletto Lace signed with initials oil on paper 22 x 14 1â &#x201E;2 inches

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Libya

Val visited Libya in January 2011. She found an untouched wealth of archaeological Greco-Roman treasures. Unexcavated and forgotten sites in Cyrenaica, Eastern Libya, empty of tourists with beautiful pavements broken by â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;gypsy weed noshing away at great art history.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 89 Il Gattopardo The Leopard signed with initials oil on board 8 x 8 inches

90 Cyrenaica signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The grey days added to the feeling that time had been suspended. Set among beautiful, expansive plains, sites like Cyrene, gave me the Alice syndrome; one could see the sites from a macro or micro viewpoint. Were we looking down from above or were we scurrying along the pavements like ants?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

91 Cyrene signed with initials oil on paper 30 x 22 inches

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VAL ARCHER TOUCHING THE SURFACE OF TIME CHRIS BEETLES LTD 2011

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com

www.chrisbeetles.com

9 781905 738335

VAL ARCHER Touching the surface of time