PATRICK CULLEN
PAT R I C K C U LL E N NE AC
CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY
Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2021 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com ISBN 978-1-914906-02-2 Cataloguing in publication data is available from the British Library A Chris Beetles Ltd Publication General Editor: Chris Beetles Edited by Pascale Oakley Design by Pascale Oakley Photography by Alper Goldenberg Additional photographs: Frontispiece © Dora Howard Page 67 © Jack Hextall Reproduction by www.cast2create.com Colour separation and printing by Geoff Neal Litho Limited
Front cover: Vineyards and Olive Groves [27] Front endpaper: Landscape with Vineyards, Autumn [33] Frontispiece: © Dora Howard, Patrick Cullen Painting in India Title page: The Way Down to Seacombe, Sunset [15] This page: Golden Vine, Morning Mist [detail of 24] Contents page: Rocky Outcrop, Catching the Evening Sun, Manang [68] Page 67: © Jack Hextall, Patrick Cullen Painting in Nepal Back endpaper: Women Bathing at Dawn, Varanasi [47] Back cover: The Last Journey [61]
CONTE NTS Our Fundamental Home: The Landscapes of Patrick Cullen
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Biography
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Catalogue
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Our Fundamental Home: The Landscapes of Patrick Cullen In looking at the works presented in this catalogue, and in the exhibition that it accompanies, it should be clear that Patrick Cullen is an artist of versatility. This becomes obvious on discovering the two searching self-portraits, painted at the ages of 50 [1] and 70 [2], which sit among the landscapes. However, it is in closely examining the landscapes themselves that his range reveals itself most profoundly. 2
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Patently, there is a geographical span, from the allotments of North London to the heights of Annapurna, and Patrick Cullen’s initial encounter with a place has often marked a new stage in the development of his art, as his paintings and drawings of Tuscany, India and Nepal divulge. Nevertheless, it is his ability to discern variety within a place, and then to articulate it so sensitively over repeated visits, that is particularly telling.
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Patrick Cullen is acutely aware of the many and subtle changes that occur, both over a day and across the seasons, to the land itself, to the light and weather that a ect it, and to the lives of the people who inhabit and cultivate it. This awareness is informed by his belief that ‘the countryside, the outdoors, the earth itself all represent our fundamental home, where as a species we evolved and as individuals we will eventually return’. It is also in uenced by his concern ‘to capture something elusive and fragile and now perhaps increasingly under threat by human destructive activity’*. His landscapes certainly succeed in capturing the subtlety and delicacy of the environment, and, partly inspired by the example of that modern French master, Pierre Bonnard, do so in an intense and often joyful way, so celebrating as well as scrutinising ‘our fundamental home’. Patrick Cullen was already an established artist when, at the close of the 1980s, he visited Tuscany, and responded wholeheartedly to its terrain. While its agricultural pattern and implied human presence suggested to him a large-scale version of the London allotments that he had been painting, it o ered him much that he had failed to #nd in England. Its undulating geography of high hills and broad plains allowed his eye greater freedom to roam, and provided it with an endless wealth of visual stimulants – formal, textural, tonal. Its timeless, traditional character also appealed to him, and brought to mind the elements of nature glimpsed in the backgrounds of many a Renaissance masterpiece. As a result, Patrick Cullen has returned frequently to the area between Florence and Siena, and has engaged constantly with it – by walking, looking and then sketching – in order to express his deep feelings about landscape. He has visited at various times of year in order to appreciate the distinct qualities of each season, and has particularly enjoyed the contrasting palettes of spring and autumn [32 & 33]. Equally attuned to the shorter diurnal rounds, he has revisited motifs at di erent hours of the day, such as vines both early in the morning [23] and late in the afternoon [38]. He has also been keen to record the e ects of changes to the weather, from the saturation of strong sunshine [28], through the soft veil of a mist [25], to heavy rain draining a scene of bright colour [43]. 32
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The topography of Tuscany has inevitably encouraged Patrick Cullen to take advantage of the many high points that look down and out across a patchwork of #elds bisected by roads or rivers [26, among others]. However, he is always keen to try out other, more unexpected, views, such as up a steep vine-covered hillside to a farmhouse high above [31] or through vegetation, a theme that gives rise to a series of singular variations, from one dominated by an unkempt copse [40] to another featuring burgeoning peach trees [17]. All of these approaches help lure the viewer fully into each landscape to share something of the artist’s own experience. 26
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Though Patrick Cullen has said that ‘over the years, I have found myself less and less drawn to the landscape of my native England’*, his extensive engagement with favourite places in Southern Europe has enabled him to treat his home ground with renewed vigour. Compelled by the constrictions of Covid, he has recently worked in the counties of Southwest England, and elicited from them a sense of nature at its freshest and most vital. Apple trees burst into blossom at Hadspen, in Somerset [9], and the path down to Seacombe, in Devon, appears invitingly untrodden at dawn [14], while the towers of Corfe Castle, in Dorset (a worthy equivalent to those of San Gimignano [30]), are edged by the morning sun [11]. 9
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While Patrick Cullen could continue inde#nitely to #nd arresting ways of presenting now familiar subjects, he has been encouraged by fellow artists, and especially by Tim Scott Bolton, to travel to new destinations, and take on new challenges. So, since 2002, he has worked in India, while, in 2019, he visited Nepal. 56
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In arriving in the town of Bundi, in Rajasthan, for the #rst time, Patrick Cullen found himself in the midst of teeming human life. In contrast to his approach to European subjects, he chose to make this human presence explicit, and central to his imagery. As a consequence, he has focussed on people interacting with their surroundings, whether in the streets [56 & 54] or at the temple [52]. In so doing, he has fully absorbed and communicated the strong visual impact of this way of life, employing a heightened palette and introducing greater contrasts of colour and texture. This is well exempli#ed by his responses to the market at Jodhpur, in which highly patterned umbrellas punctuate the air while casting pools of shadow across the ground [55 & 57], and bright oranges glow like hot coals [58]. 55
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The decision of Patrick Cullen to engage with such populous places in India, rather than to seek out its uninhabited landscapes, may be due in part to the country’s more traditional way of life and, as a result of its systems of belief, to the awareness of a cycle of existence among its people. In returning to India over the years, he has explored this trait more fully, in visiting such spiritual centres as Varanasi (sacred to Hindus) and Palitana (sacred to Jains). While conjuring up the sensuous splendour of these places in his images, he has also imbued them with a sense of deeper meaning. In painting The Last Journey [61], he has gone further in his re ection on those deeper meanings, and, as he explains in his own note to the work, has produced what is for him an unusually ‘conceptual piece’ that reimagines the ‘scene above Palitana … as an ascent towards oblivion or just possibly enlightenment, the distant Jain temples now replaced by the vast remoteness of the Himalayas vanishing into the clouds’ (see page 58 for the full note). 61
The Last Journey contrasts with most of Patrick Cullen’s Indian works in appearance and mood, and has been a ected by his recent visit to Nepal. For, while the busy urban life of India can distract attention from the wider environment, that environment is ever present in Nepal. In many if not most of the artist’s images of the country, the snow-capped peaks of Annapurna dominate, and such small human communities as Manang and Pisang accommodate themselves to it. Spots of colour – temple roofs, prayer ags, the occasional tree – strike up conversations with the starkly beautiful setting that concern something beyond the visible. If Patrick Cullen’s Tuscany emphasises the Edenic comfort of our earthly home, then his Nepal emphasises its most fundamental existential qualities. David Wootton *These quotations are taken from Patrick Cullen’s unpublished statement, ‘Some thoughts about painting’.
PATR I C K C U L L E N Patrick Cullen, NEAC (born 1949) Patrick Cullen is well known for his atmospheric landscapes of Southern Europe, shown in all seasons and weathers, and especially those of Tuscany, the South of France and Andalucía. Over the last 15 years or so, he has also developed a reputation for highly evocative scenes of India, which focus on the life of its streets, markets and riverbanks. In addition, he is a perceptive portraitist. Patrick Cullen was born in Addlestone, Surrey, on 8 August 1949, the third of the six children of Peter Cullen, who worked for the family grocery business, and his wife, Jane (née Greener). He showed an interest in art from early childhood, and was encouraged by his mother, who herself had a talent for drawing and painting. She was the great-niece of E B S Monte#ore, a painter of rural and farmyard scenes, many of whose canvases hung in the family home while Patrick was growing up. He won a number of prizes for art while at school and, on graduating from the University of Bristol, where he read politics and sociology, he decided to concentrate on painting. So he went to London to study at St Martin’s School of Art (1972-73), and then at Camberwell School of Art (1973-76), where his teachers included Christopher Chamberlain, Anthony Eyton and Dick Lee. While being strongly attracted to landscape painting, Patrick demonstrated his versatility in his early solo shows by including examples of other subjects, notably self-portraits and interior scenes. He held his #rst solo shows at the Ogle Gallery, Eastbourne, in 1978, and Amalgam Art Ltd, Barnes, London, in 1979 (the #rst of three at that venue). In 1979, he also began to contribute works to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, including scenes of allotments, which would become a favourite subject. From this early stage in his career, he was already working with equal success in oil, pastel and watercolour, and, in 1981, held a solo show of watercolours at the O Centre Gallery in Islington. In 1983, he married the composer and musician, Sally Davies, in Islington. They settled in Finsbury Park, and have two daughters. Patrick has won a number of major prizes, beginning with the Greater London Council’s painting competition, ‘The Spirit of London’, in 1984, and the Watercolour Prize of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, in 1989, for The O ces of Beale and Company. The second of these prizes enabled him to travel to Italy, where he responded particularly to the landscape of Tuscany, which inspired paintings that have proved central to his developing vision. In time, he also began to make painting trips to Southern France and Andalucía, the latter o ering rougher, more mountainous subject matter. In 1987, Patrick began to exhibit at the Thackeray Gallery, and between 1992 and 2005 held seven solo shows there. During that time, he also held two solo shows at the Jane Neville Gallery, Aslockton, Nottinghamshire (1999, 2002). In 1990, Patrick was elected to the Pastel Society, and exhibited annually in its shows until 2004, when he ceased to be a member.
During that time, he won the society’s premier award, the Daler-Rowney Prize, on three occasions, in 1990, 1995 and 2000. Since 1991, Patrick has exhibited at open exhibitions of the Royal Watercolour Society, and his contributions have won him the Abbott and Holder Travel Award (1991) and the Royal Watercolour Society Award (2004). Exhibiting with the New English Art Club from 1995, Patrick was elected as a member in 1997. Since then, he has won the Kathleen Tronson Award and the Jan Ondaatje Rolls Prize (both 2001), the Minto Prize (2003) and the Critics’ Prize (2016), the last for the watercolour, The Burning Ghat, Dusk, Varanasi. For most of the years between 1996 and 2013, Patrick demonstrated his skills as a painter at the annual event, ‘Art in Action, held at Waterperry Gardens, Oxfordshire. In 1997, Patrick was one of 15 artists, including Ken Howard, to receive an invitation from the Jewish National Fund and the Linda Blackstone Gallery, Pinner, to paint in Israel, in celebration of the #ftieth anniversary of the founding of the state. The results were exhibited in the following year in ‘Israel at 50 – Artistic Impressions’, held at the Linda Blackstone Gallery and then at the Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. By the turn of the century, Patrick had established a strong reputation as a painter, and especially for his landscapes of Southern Europe. Then, in 2002, he received an invitation from his fellow painter, Tim Scott Bolton, and his wife, Tricia, to join one of their painting trips to Rajasthan. This led him to make more than a dozen trips alone to India to draw and paint in the streets and markets of Rajasthan and Gujarat. These culminated in solo shows at Indar Pastricha Fine Arts, London, in 2010, 2013 and 2016. In addition, he travelled to India in the company of fellow painters, #rst Ken Howard and Robert King, and then Peter Brown, Ken Howard and Neale Worley (the last of whom #lmed and photographed the trip). The second of those joint trips led to a four-man show at Indar Pastricha Fine Arts in October 2015. Other solo shows during this period include those at the Summerleaze Gallery, East Knoyle, Wiltshire (2006, 2017); the New Grafton Gallery, London (2007); the London Centre for Psychotherapy (2008); the Highgate Gallery, London (2010, 2015), and the Russell Gallery, London (2017). In 2010, Patrick was elected to the Chelsea Art Society and, two years later, won its Painting Prize. Between 2012 and 2016, Patrick exhibited with the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, and won the Runners-Up Prize in 2015 (again for the watercolour, The Burning Ghat, Dusk, Varanasi). In 2019, Patrick was invited by Tim Scott Bolton to join him on a painting trip to Nepal, in his belief that Patrick should be painting mountains. They were joined by fellow painter, Tobit Roche, and the cameraman, Jack Hextall, who was engaged to #lm the trip. The resulting paintings and drawings by all three artists, and the #lm made by Jack Hextall, were shown at the exhibition, ‘Out of Thin Air’, held at the Royal Geographical Society, London, in September 2021.
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SELF-PORTRAITS
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1 Self-Portrait at 50 Signed Oil on canvas 20 x 25 inches
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2 Self-Portrait at 70 Signed Oil on canvas 25 x 24 inches
ENGLAND
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3 Spring on the Allotment Signed Pastel 22 x 25 inches
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4 September Allotments Signed Pastel 27 ½ x 22 inches
5 Allotment in the Snow Signed Oil on canvas 11 x 13 inches
6 Allotments near Ally Pally Signed Oil on canvas 10 x 13 inches
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7 Allotments, Spring Blossom Signed Pastel 15 x 23 inches
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8 Apple Tree in Blossom Signed Pastel 19 x 15 inches
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9 Cider Apple Orchard in Spring, Hadspen, Somerset Signed Pastel 19 x 25 inches
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10 Cows Returning, Corfe Castle Signed Oil on canvas 22 x 35 inches
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11 Corfe Castle, Dawn Signed Pastel 22 x 28 inches
12 View over Swanage Signed Pastel 11 x 28 inches
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13 View of Swanage, Evening Light Signed Oil on canvas 14 x 25 inches
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14 The Way Down to Seacombe, Dawn Signed Oil on board 42 x 33 inches
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15 The Way Down to Seacombe, Sunset Signed Oil on canvas 22 x 28 inches
ITALY
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16 Fruit Trees in Blossom, Certaldo Signed Pastel 16 ½ x 19 ½ inches
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17 Between Two Peach Trees Signed Pastel 17 x 20 inches
19 Green Vineyard near Baccio (opposite below) Signed Pastel 12 x 21 inches
18 Sant’ Appiano Signed Oil on canvas 14 x 20 inches
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20 Looking towards Vico D’Elsa, Morning Mist Signed Pastel 23 x 27 inches
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21 Looking towards Vico D’Elsa Signed Oil on canvas 18 x 19 inches
22 Yellow Vines against the Light Signed Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches
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23 Early Morning Vine Signed Oil on canvas 16 x 19 inches
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24 Golden Vine, Morning Mist Signed Oil on canvas 30 x 22 inches
25 Yellow Vines, Misty Day Signed Oil on canvas on board 20 x 25 inches
26 Patterned Vineyards from an Olive Grove, Tuscany (below) Signed Oil on canvas on board 22 x 42 inches
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27 Vineyards and Olive Groves Signed Pastel 32 x 26 inches
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28 Golden Hillside, Tuscany Signed Watercolour 26 x 35 inches
29 View from a Steep Hillside, Tuscany (opposite) Signed Pastel 38 x 31 inches
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30 Vines, San Gimignano Sunset Signed Pastel 21 x 30 inches
31 Vineyard below a Farmhouse (opposite) Signed Oil on canvas 36 x 26 inches
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32 Landscape with Vineyards, Spring Signed Pastel 23 x 29 inches
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33 Landscape with Vineyards, Autumn Signed Watercolour with pastel 42 x 54 inches
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34 Study for Red Vines Signed Charcoal 17 x 25 inches
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35 Red Vineyard near Maggiano Signed Oil on board 17 x 25 inches
36 Red Vineyard Signed Oil on canvas 10 x 17 inches
37 September Vine (below) Signed Oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches
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38 Red Vine, Late Afternoon, Tuscany Signed Oil on canvas 33 x 40 inches
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39 November Vine, Soft Rain Signed Pastel 25 x 19 inches
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40 Vineyards through a Wood, Tuscany Signed Pastel 23 x 31 inches
41 Monte Leone Sunset Signed Oil on canvas 17 x 10 inches
44 42 Bare Vines and Fruit Trees, Sunset Signed Pastel 13 x 23 inches
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43 Calanchi in the Rain, Tuscany Signed Pastel 45 x 53 inches
INDIA
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44 Burning Ghat at Dawn Signed Oil on canvas 17 x 20 inches
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45 Burning Ghat at Dusk Signed Pastel 17 x 20 inches
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46 Umbrellas, Monsoon, Varanasi Signed Watercolour 20 x 16 inches
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47 Women Bathing at Dawn, Varanasi Signed Watercolour with pastel 34 x 54 inches
48 Street Market, Varanasi Signed Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches
49 Boats at Dawn Signed Oil on canvas 10 x 14 inches
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50 Woman Washing Clothes Signed Oil on canvas 11 x 23 inches
51 Varanasi Ghats from the Ganges Signed Pastel 14 x 22 inches
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52 Temple at Night, Bundi Signed Pastel 17 x 13 ½ inches
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53 Victoria Terminus at Night, Mumbai Signed Pastel 18 ½ x 24 inches
54 Bundi Street Corner Signed Oil on canvas 16 x 12 inches
55 Bundi Street Scene Signed Pastel 19 ½ x 14 inches
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56 Umbrellas, Jodhpur (opposite above) Signed Oil on board 14 x 17 inches
57 Umbrellas, Jodhpur II (opposite below) Signed Oil on board 13 x 16 inches
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58 Fruit Stall, Covered Market, Jodhpur Signed Oil on board 20 x 24 inches
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59 Kumbhalgarh Signed Oil on canvas 23 x 28 inches
60 Steps to the Jain Temples, Palitana Signed Pastel 12 ½ x 14 ½ inches
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The Last Journey The Last Journey is an unusual painting for me in that it is quite a conceptual piece. That is to say it is informed by an idea. Most of my paintings are fairly instinctive responses to something seen. A lot of my work is done en plein air and is about trying to capture what I feel to be the essential beauty of what I am looking at. Generally, I am less interested in the possible meaning or signi#cance of a subject than in what I #nd visually exciting, delightful or satisfying about it. I guess my work is in this respect quite hedonistic. But in The Last Journey I started with what I would call a meaningful image resonant with ideas. It was something that I saw and which struck me as having the power of an iconic tableau, with many possible layers of interpretation. A few years ago I was climbing the nearly 4000 steps that take you up to the extraordinary complex of over 900 Jain temples on Shatrunjaya hill, high above the town of Palitana in Gujarat. Many pilgrims as well as some tourists were making the same journey. Some of the older, wealthier Jains were being transported on primitive sedan chairs strung from a massive single pole shouldered by two bearers, one in front and one behind. Watching these men taking the full weight of their human charge as they climbed what seemed like an eternity of steps made a deep impression on me. I made a quick drawing which later that day I turned into a small pastel painting which I kept, always with a vague idea of one day making a big painting of the scene. The image was complex and ambiguous in many ways. It could for example strike one as a cruel image of almost feudal inequality, the Indian caste system writ large, or as digni#ed by self-sacri#ce: the young and able shouldering the burden for the old and in#rm. It had all kinds of echoes for me of other things I had seen or read about, but in particular it recalled an extraordinary Japanese #lm, The Ballad of Narayama, one of the most haunting #lms I have ever seen. It depicts the life of a nineteenth-century Japanese mountain village in which the old, once their lives are felt to be nearing their end, to avoid being a burden on their food strapped community, submit to being carried high up into the mountains above their village to be left to die in the freezing cold. After I came back from painting in the Himalayas in 2019 I found myself returning to that scene above Palitana and reimagining it as an ascent towards oblivion or just possibly enlightenment, the distant Jain temples now replaced by the vast remoteness of the Himalayas vanishing into the clouds. I would like to think that this image could also be read across from the individual level to that of our species as we hurtle towards the destruction of our habitat. I have painted a landscape, still beautiful I hope, but strangely arid and forbidding, the trees withered and dying. Patrick Cullen September 2021
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61 The Last Journey Signed Watercolour 54 x 55 inches
NEPAL
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62 Prayer Wall and Annapurna 3, Manang Signed Oil on board 30 x 40 inches
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63 Above and Below, Annapurna Signed Oil on board 35 x 42 inches
64 Frozen River near Pisang Signed Oil on board 20 x 16 inches
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65 The Outskirts of Muktinath from the Buddhist Monastery Signed Pastel 15 x 20 inches
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66 Track into the Village, Morning Light, Pisang Signed Oil on board 25 x 31 inches
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67 Study for Rocky Outcrop, Catching the Evening Sun, Manang Signed Charcoal 27 x 23 inches
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68 Rocky Outcrop, Catching the Evening Sun, Manang Signed Oil on board 33 x 41 inches
69 Study for Annapurna 2 from the River, Pisang Signed Pastel 9 x 12 inches
70 Street Scene, Pisang (left) Signed Pastel 20 x 16 inches
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71 Setting off from Besisahar (opposite below) Signed Pastel 16 x 23 inches
Patrick Cullen painting in Nepal
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C H R IS B E E TLE S GALLE RY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com
