Val Archer: with pleasure

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VAL ARCHER with pleasure

Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2023

8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6QB

020 7839 7551

gallery@chrisbeetles.com

www.chrisbeetles.com

ISBN 978-1-914906-09-1

Cataloguing in publication data is available from the British Library

A Chris Beetles Ltd Publication

Edited by Chris Beetles and Fiona Nickerson

Design by Pascale Oakley

Photography by Alper Goldenberg

Reproduction by www.cast2create.com

Colour separation and printing by Geoff Neal Litho Limited

Front cover: Mimosa [29]

Front endpaper: Honesty in Tin Baths [44]

Back endpaper: Still Life with Penguins [14]

Back cover: Oliver Picker’s Basket, Tuscany [47]

MUSLIN CURTAIN AND PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches

0

VAL ARCHER with pleasure

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY

2023

VAL ARCHER

Val Archer is one of the most perceptive and meticulous of contemporary painters. Her intensity of observation re ects a lifetime looking at the ideas surrounding what painting is, has been and can be.

Her paintings are generously coloured and deeply attentive to form and texture. Flowers, fruit and fabrics are set against complex, resonant surfaces to encapsulate feelings for places and cultures.

Val was born in Northampton, England, and studied at Manchester College of Art and the Royal College of Art.

Her rst solo exhibition was at the long-established Kunsthaus Buhler in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1975. She exhibited with Fischer Fine Art, London, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and with Noortman, Maastricht, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Val’s commissions have included illustrations and paintings for the Sunday Telegraph, BBC Good Food and illustrated books, the most notable being a collaboration

with the Italian food writer Anna del Conte, The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina. In the early 1980’s she co-created the Tate Gallery’s award-winning exhibition Paint and Painting about the history of art materials and of colour and technique in painting.

Travel has long informed and inspired Val’s work. Latterly this has included Libya, Portugal, The Netherlands, Southern Africa, Myanmar and Iran. In recent years, she has divided her time between her studios in London and Tuscany, recording the everyday natural and man-made objects that appeal to her.

In 1998, in recognition of Val’s position as a distinctive voice in contemporary still life painting, Chris Beetles Gallery staged its rst solo exhibition of her work. This close and exclusive association has continued to-date with regular exhibitions at its St James’s gallery of her latest paintings.

With pleasure features important new work and selected paintings from the past 25 years.

Chris Beetles Gallery Solo Exhibitions

1998Val Archer

2001Val Archer

2007Val Archer and the Art of Cucina

2011Val Archer: Touching the Surface of Time

2012Val Archer: An Italian Summer

2014Val Archer: Travels with my Art

2016Val Archer: The Still Moment

2019 Val Archer: Place and Culture

(loan exhibition at Nunnington Hall, Yorkshire)

All works in the catalogue are signed with initials and painted in oil

Prima dipingere, poi mangiare

First paint, then eat

5

This painting just evolved, I have to be excited about all the elements, flowers, vase, background and foreground. I used the fabric because it reminds me of water and the amaryllis were so intransigent, I wanted to throw against them something that was broken and fluid. The pomegranates have mosaics inside them like the background.

It started with the majolica tile background and I wanted to put pattern against pattern. The washed-out blue of the tiles contrasted with vast quantities of crazy, structural agapanthas from our London garden. The glass vase was to show full structural length of stems.

6
2 (opposite) AGAPANTHAS IN GLASS VASE 39 ½ x 24 ½ inches 1 (above) AMARYLLIS AND POMEGRANATES 39 x 27 inches
7

A friend lent the wonderful eggy-shaped celadon vase and I just put it down in the studio next to the faceted one and they were such a contrast I had to paint them. The mosaic is a floor from some Roman villa I saw somewhere ...

8
4 GREEN JUG AND TILES FROM RAVENNA 10 x 8 inches
3
VIBURNHAM IN GREEN VASE 21 ½ x 15 inches 5 (opposite) SUNFLOWERS AND TILES FROM LISBON 29 ½ x 21 ½ inches It’s hard painting sun flowers after Van Gogh, you think, how dare I?
9

I found this extraordinary jug in Arezzo market, I loved its pear-shaped angularity and the anarchy of the hydrangea flower heads.

10 6 TIN OLIVE OIL JUG WITH PLATE OF PEARS 19 ½ x 14 inches

Both are associated with Iran, the wonderfully ornate tiles and being in Shiraz when the yellow roses were tumbling everywhere.

11 7
26
RAMBLING ROSE AND PLUM BLOSSOM FROM SHIRAZ 41 ¼ x
inches

These milk pails were simply our wall decorations one year in Italy.

12 8 NASTURTIUMS
30
9
30
IN MILK PAIL
x 22 inches
PETUNIAS IN MILK PAIL
x 22 inches
13 10 PLUMBAGO AND YELLOW ROSE 30 x 22 inches

The background is a rusty yellow table top and was my starting point, the jug is from Arezzo market and I just loved the colours.

14 11 STRIPED JUG WITH ARTICHOKE 22 x 15 inches 12 ROSEHIPS IN RUSTY OLIVE OIL JUG 15 x 16 ½ inches

‘Cappelli Di Preti’ are priest's caps in Italian (the Spindle plant). The terracotta vase

I found in Pissignano's monthly market.

15 13 CAPPELLI DI PRETI 30 x 22 inches

Jug from a potter who runs a shop in the centre of Cortona and it called to me from the shelf. The stripey material is from our front door curtain when I was a kid and the rest is just gorgeous orange things. Pomegranates from our tree and the ‘zucca’ from our neighbour Patrizia.

15 (opposite) ROSEHIPS IN CORTONESE VASE 30 x 22 inches

16 14 STILL LIFE
PENGUINS 22
30
WITH
x
inches

Again about a sense of place. The vase which I found in an antique shop in Cortona, is a particular design of pottery associated with the region and the rosehips were out at the same time I bought it.

17
18 16 GERANIUM AND GOOSEBERRIES ON MOSAIC 20 ½ x 14 ½ inches
19 17
PINK CHERRY BLOSSOM ON MOSAIC 29 ½ x 22 inches

Walking in the hills is my favourite thing to do and I walk every morning passing marvellous meadow grasses beside the road. The farmers don’t use pesticides so there are so many wild flowers, amongst the wheat that has escaped from farmer’s fields. The wind is always blowing so that is why they are leaning. I didn’t want to confine them in a vase, I wanted them to be as free and full of air as they were when I saw them each morning.

20 18 MEADOW 22 x 15 inches
21 19 AUTUMN LEAVES AND APPLES 37 x 25 inches
22
22 BLUE FLOWER 11 ½ x 3 ¼ inches 20 NASTURTIUMS 11 ½ x 3 inches 21 PETUNIAS 11 ½ x 3 ¼ inches
23 23 VERBASCUM 11
3
24
11
3
25
26
¼ x
¾ inches
PINK JAPANESE ANEMONE
½ x
¾ inches
PLUMBAGO 11 ½ x 3 ¾ inches
HAWTHORN BERRIES 20 ¼ x 5 inches
24 27
WINTER ROSES, SUMMER ROSEBUDS 30 x 22 inches 28 (opposite) COW PARSLEY AND DIANTHUS 30 x 22 inches

I enjoyed the balance and contrast of ‘la mezzina’ [Tuscan well bucket] a galvanised solid bucket with the airy, transparent, delicacy of the cow parsley and dianthus.

25

Mimosa is spring in Italy for me, frothy, funny, frivolous flowers.

26 29 MIMOSA 25 x 19 inches

I am really drawn to patterns but I don’t want the painting to be entirely flat, so I try to balance the pattern with something that is in the round and tactile.

27 30 TEA FOR TWO 13 ½ x 16 ½ inches

Lemons from the tree that Italian friends bought me for my birthday years ago.

LEMONS

28 33
15 x 11 inches
32 (above) PEACH WITH TILES 8 x 6 inches 31 (above left) POMEGRANATE ISFAHAN 8 x 8 inches
29 36 PEAS 15 x 11 inches
35 (above right) LANGOUSTINE ON FISH MOSAIC 8 ¼ x 12 inches 34 (above) LANGOUSTINE 8 x 8 inches
‘Kelvedon Wonder’ grown both in the garden in Italy and my father’s allotment.

We grew them both and loved the

together.

30
37 (above) SQUASH AND SMALL AUBERGINE 8 x 8 inches 38 (above right) TWO POTS OF MARMALADE 6 x 8 inches 39 (right) CHERRIES IN BRASS BOWL 12 x 8 ¼ inches shapes and colours Eat with your eyes.

These things are all in my kitchen in Italy and we were so proud of the tomatoes that we grew that year.

31 40 BRASS BOWL WITH TOMATOES 21 x 28 ¼ inches
32 41 JUG OF BUTTERCUPS 15
11 inches
x
42 (opposite) BASKET OF PEARS 22 x 14 ½ inches

I was in Italy and thinking about Sienese paintings. It was such an arid summer. The trees were so dry, the bleached, dead leaves were blowing off, all becoming autumn before autumn.

33

There were clouds of crackly Honesty growing by the side of the road and I had to paint them.

34 43 RED GLASS JAR AND HONESTY 8 x 8 inches 44 HONESTY IN TIN BATHS 29 ½ x 39 ½ inches
35 45 POPPYSEED HEADS AND FORSYTHIA 30 x 22 inches

These are exactly the colours just before autumn in Italy, when there is a slight mist in the air which turns everything a hazy greeny gray. Heather grows against the lichen covered rocks on the hillside and the lace echoes the intricate structure of the heather.

36 46 HEATHER 27 ½ x 20 ½ inches

I was trying to get the feeling of what it was like in Italy last October. The light coming through my studio window and the old olive picker’s basket, lent to us by our neighbour, Ugo, to pick our own olives for the first time.

37 47 OLIVE PICKER'S BASKET, TUSCANY 29 ½ x 22 inches

In the church of San Francesco in Montefalco, there is a stunning fresco cycle by Gozzoli, tucked behind a corner against a mouldering wall is this beautiful brocade chair with puny, little twisty legs that don’t look right. I added the bum-like peaches.

38 48 BROCADE CHAIR AND PEACHES 30 x 22 inches
39 49 BOWLS AND PLATES 40 x 56 inches Exhibited: ‘Val Archer’, Chris Beetles Gallery, London, 2001
with pleasure ... works from the last 25 years
40 1998 ‘Val Archer’, Chris Beetles
October 1998 50 THE PEN TRAY 7 ¾ x 12 inches 51 MAMBAZO 26 x 35 inches
Gallery,

2001

‘Val Archer’, Chris Beetles Gallery, October 2001

41
52 VINE TOMATOES 12 x 14 ½ inches 53 SHEEKEY’S LANGOUSTINES 23 ½ x 29 ½ inches

2007

‘Val Archer, The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina’, Chris Beetles Gallery, October 2007

42
54 BEANS AND PULSES 16 x 21 ¼ inches

SAN DANIELLE HAM

29 x 19 inches

Illustrated: Anna Del Conte and Val Archer, The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina , London: Conran Octopus, 2007, page 98

43
55

2011

‘Val Archer. Touching the Surface of Time’, Chris Beetles Gallery, May 2011

44
56 FRUTTA 30
22
x
inches
57 (opposite) DISEGNO 30 x 22 inches
45

2012

‘Val Archer. An Italian Summer’, Chris Beetles Gallery, May 2012

46
58 PERSIMMONS AND FREESIAS 17 x 21 ½ inches

EGGS

FOR ZABAGLIONE AND MAJOLICA TILES

22 ½ x 30 inches

47 59
Illustrated: Anna Del Conte and Val Archer, The Painter, the Cook and the Art of Cucina , London: Conran Octopus, 2007, pages 54-55

2014

‘Val Archer. Travels with My Art’, Chris Beetles Gallery, June 2014

48
60
22
19
WHITE TULIPS
x
¾ inches
61 (opposite) CHERRY STONES 29 x 21 inches
49

2016

‘Val Archer. The Still Moment’, Chris Beetles Gallery, October 2016

50
62
21
YELLOW BOWL, RED APPLES ¼ x
23
inches 63 (opposite) QUINCES IN BRASS BOWL 29 ½ x 21 inches
51

2019

‘Place and Culture, Val Archer at Nunnington Hall’, North Yorkshire, February 2019

64 QUINCE AND APPLES ON COSMATESQUE 14 x 21 inches

65 (below) FIGS, APPLES AND WALNUTS 21 ¾ x 30 inches

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CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY

8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6QB

020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com

www.chrisbeetles.com

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