KG Gazette volume 5

ART NEWS FROM KILMORACK GALLERY

August 2012 Issue 5

Christopher Wood Alan McGowan Kirstie Cohen Caledonian Club exhibition

Northern Exposure Kilmorack Gallery at The Caledonian Club, London

an exhibition of work by Kilmorack Gallery artists at The Caledonian Club, Belgravia, London 12th October - 23rd November 2012

The Caledonian Club 9 Halkin Street Belgravia London SW1X 7DR 020 7235 5162 www.caledonianclub.com

The Old Kilmorack Church

by Beauly Inverness-shire IV4 7AL 01463 783 230 art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk

to warm you up...

Harvest

by David Cook oil on board 122cm x 122cm

Editor’s letter What lies at the core of a good painting? Is it drawing?

Quite possibly… we put on an exhibition of drawings in 2005 and it was clear that the best artists have the ability to draw, and the eye to see a strong line. We also put on an exhibition of ‘Art and the Word’ because poetry too is often central to an art work. If words are not actually physically imbedded in a work, they often exist in a verbal mantra running in artists’ minds as they work. Looking for the essence of a ‘good’ artwork becomes a fixation if you live with paintings in a gallery every day.

Our next themed show might be ‘A Sense of Place.’

I just got back from Zurich which made me wonder how many out of the 7 billion individuals on the planet are obsessive about their relationship with the world.

Probably most are. It is universal need, beyond flagwaving that’s bound to dominate this July. It can be far more subtle. Look at the work in this edition of the KG Gazette and underneath all the works you see is a sense of belonging to each other and the planet. A painting is an expression of love. Art should go beyond national boundaries. It is a unifying force, and it is difficult and complex enough to have kept artists busy since they first put hand-to-paint-to-wall-to-cave. ‘A Sense of Place‘ may actually be the oldest show ever.

Tony Davidson Gallery Director

to cool you down...

Penguin ii

by Helen Denerly 70cm high made from abandoned metal.

contents

‘Immediately visceral and innately cerebral...’ Alan McGowan’s the language of the body

gallery director Tony Davidson

gallery manager Ruth Tauber

the old kilmorack church by beauly, inverness-shire iv4 7al

+44 (0) 1463 783 230 art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

page 5

Kilmorack Gallery News Round up

page 6-7

‘Immediately visceral and innately cerebral...’ Georgina Coburn on Alan McGowan’s life drawings

page 8-9

from the archive

page 10-11

Kirstie Cohen

page 12-13

Christopher Wood RSW

page 14

Henry Fraser’s ‘The Protagonist’

page 15

Helen Denerley’s Olympic Tree of Life

Kilmorack Gallery News Round Up Happy moving house Joyce W Cairns For many years Joyce W Cairns has been synonymous with Aberdeen.

This summer she moves to a new home and studio in Broughty Ferry.

We wish her a smooth move.

Caledonian Club show Dates are set for our show in Belgravia, London. This will be from 9th October until mid-December.

We will take a range of significant Scottish artists. Many thanks for the Caledonian Club for inviting Kilmorack Gallery.

Please contact the gallery for more information. 01463 783 230

Art Fund Talk: Allan MacDonald Back in May we hosted an ArtFund talk with Allan MacDonald organised

by ArtFund. Allan talked in detail about his body of work ‘the silence and the storm’ and the influence of Canadian painter Tom Thomson.

To hear more about ArtFund and the events they organise visit www.artfund.org or contact Tanera Bryden on 01309 651 355

7 5

6

‘Immediately visceral and innately cerebral...’

Georgina Coburn on Alan McGowan’s life drawings

Following the release of Alan McGowan’s superb visual essay, The Language of the Body, Figure Drawings in Four Chapters, Northern audiences have the opportunity to view some of the exceptional drawings and paintings featured in the artist’s publication first hand.

Resoundingly the human body is the text and McGowan’s command and understanding of his subject, chosen medium and context are richly in evidence throughout. Immediately visceral and innately cerebral, this body of work sits within the canon of Western Art and the figurative tradition as a history of ideas lived visually.

The distillation of McGowan’s own visual language within this suite of drawings and paintings is a joy to behold. In Back i (Mixed media) the aura of the body as well as its physical mass are defined by a singular washed mark on paper demonstrating absolute precision, economy and totality. Elegantly linear contours and defining marks at the hip convincingly allow the viewer to read the axis of weight, not just in physical terms but the emotional gravitas of the figure.

This dynamic between abstraction and tactile physicality is one of the most compelling characteristics of the artist’s evolving work.

Torso i (Oil on Board) is another magnificent example, a work as invested in the art of painting as it is in the body as a visual text.

The heightened tonality of the painting references the work of artists such as Rembrandt, while the richly textural paint handling in thick impasto creates form and presence akin to Bacon. Like Rembrandt’s hanging carcasses, McGowan’s Torso i illuminates humanity in light and darkness; as monumental architects of ideas and vulnerable, mortal slabs of meat. The artist’s technical skills in relation to anatomy and paint handling are equally matched by his ability to transcend the personal and illuminate the universal experience of what it is to be human.

Recline (Mixed Media) is another beautiful example; the ribcage and hip defined in a series of master strokes coupled with charcoal lines of breath taking delicacy, reminiscent of Rodin’s drawings. The figure in its entirety is reimagined in the mind of the viewer; the head, for example,

depicted in just a series of rapid and intense marks as visual triggers. We are given all the information we need not just to look but to see. The human body as a physical presence and as a set of ideas or associations is also exemplified by Two Skeletons (Mixed media), where the energy and vibrancy of drawn and washed marks from the internal structure of the bones radiates outwards; a timeless dance between the subject and the artist’s hand. McGowan’s works are life studies in the most expansive sense; creation and destruction, beginning and end contained in every vibrant, essential mark.

7

from the archive

Kilmorack Church 1995 This is a photograph of the gallery seventeen years ago, when I was waiting to gain planning permission for re-use of the church as a gallery. Planning took two years and I amused myself by building canoes and carrying out rennovations.

8

camel at night This was a magical moon-lit night when Helen Denerley’s camel and lizard looked wonderful in the night light.

9

‘I have been exploring landscape in painting since I left Glasgow School of Art in 1988.

My influences have been the flat coastal features and expansive skies of East Lothian where I grew up and presently the contrasts of the Highland landscape and climate.

I am not interested in making a literal statement. My subject matter is only a springboard, a starting point taking one into unknown territory.

There are many complex considerations to take into account when composing a painting such as changing spatial relationships, emotional response, memory and imagination.’ Kirstie Cohen

10

kirstie cohen exhibiting from 11th August Kirstie Cohen was born (1965) in Edinburgh to an artistic family. Her well-know ceramic artist father David Cohen is still exhibiting widely today.

Her formal education was in a Steiner school, followed by Edinburgh and Glasgow Schools of Art. Nowadays she works in the highlands, from her hilltop studio with work selling well throughout the UK. Kirstie Cohen uses a painstaking technique of layering oil paints and glazes to create her work. The paintings are of no particular place, evoking instead the distinct quality of light that distinguishes the Scottish Highlands.

11

President of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) (2009 - 2011) Vice-President of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) (2006-2009) Board Member of the Exhibiting Societies of Scotland (ESSA) (2006-2011) An elected member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW) (2006) Elected to serve on the Council of the SSA (2004 - 2011) A Professional Member of The Glasgow Art Club (2005) An Elected Member of The Paisley Art Institute (PAI) (2005) An Elected Professional Member of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) (2004) An Elected Professional Member of the Visual Arts Scotland (VAS) (1993) Awards include: The Sir William Gillies Award (RSW 2009) The Glasgow Art Club Fellowship (RSW 2005) The Armour Award (RGI 1994) The James Torrance Memorial Award (RGI 1993) [further awards] He has been elected to serve on the Selection Committee and or Hanging & Arranging Committees of most of the SSA Annual Exhibitions held in the Royal Scottish Academy over the last ten years. ...

Collections include: HRH Prince Charles the Duke of Rothesay; the Bank of Scotland; United Distillers; Edinburgh University; Lennox Lewis; The Demarco European Foundation; MacRoberts Solicitors; Premier Property Group; Phoenix Equity Partners and many other private and corporate collections around the world.

He is married with two young children and two step-children. He lives and works in the coastal town of Dunbar, near Edinburgh.

12

christopher wood rsw

exhibiting from 11th August

Christopher Wood’s paintings are made from mixed media, and the physical process of creating is intertwined by the careful abstraction of the subject, be that the sea, the elements or the cry of gulls.

Since he graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in the 1980s, Christopher Wood has had many solo shows across the UK and is an invited member of prestigious societies bearing acronyms (RGI, PAI, SSA and VAS). He has a score of awards to his name and work in the best of collections. This is Wood’s first major exhibition since retiring as president of the Scottish Societyof Artists earlier this year.

13

‘the protagonist’ Henry Fraser 80cm x 80cm, £1600

This work was painted after a studio visit by art-writer Georgina Coburn. It’s not an exact likeness. That is not what Fraser was attempting, but it is arguably a deeper portrait, the essence. In the background is on of Georgina Coburn’s (favourable) reviews

14

Helen Denerley’s olympic tree of life This sculpture was originally a maquette for an Olympic sculpture for Scotland. The final sculpture would have stood 50 ft tall, in Braemar, where the original Scottish Highland Games were held.

It would have been unveiled to coincide with the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The animals in the tree of life were chosen to represent excellence in five qualities Olympic athletes aspire to.

128cm high

Distance….ARCTIC TERN migrates 25000 miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

£12,000

Height…SOUTHERN CRICKET FROG jumps 62 times its own body length

Endurance….SALMON swims up to 3000 miles to return to its spawning grounds leaping waterfalls and fighting its way up shallow rapids.

Speed….CHEETAH is the fastest runner on earth reaching speeds of over 70 mph

Strength…. RHINOCEROS BEETLE can lift up to 850 times its own weight.

for more information contact Ruth on 01463 783 230 or ruth@kilmorackgallery.co.uk

15

‘light is therefore colour’

the old kilmorack church by beauly, inverness-shire iv4 7al +44 (0) 1463 783 230 art@kilmorackgallery.co.uk www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

JMW Turner