elemental north
elemental north
Jake Attree
Jake Attree
David Blackburn
Maxwell Doig
www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545
David Blackburn 1 Black Collage, 1987 pastel and collage 42 x 37 cms 161⁄2 x 145⁄8 ins
Photograph Š Christopher Nunn
David Blackburn
Maxwell Doig 2 Church, Fylingthorpe acrylic on canvas on panel 97 x 72 cms 38 x 281⁄2 ins
Maxwell Doig
Northern Echoes Emily Brontë’s famous description in Wuthering Heights of Cathy’s love for Heathcliff gives a glimpse of what it is that powers the northern soul. In contrast to what she feels for the smart, lowland Linton, which is ‘like the foliage in the woods: time will change it’, her love for Heathcliff ‘resembles the eternal rocks beneath’. It is an emotional pull that is as inexorable as it is wild, something that is seen as deeply bound to the land, in layers of time and rock. This is a vision that could come out of no other part of the British Isles. Certainly the toughness of Heathcliff’s attractions reflects a traditional view of the grittiness of the North. Just as characteristic though, is how critically important the theme of land and the layered history of places has been to those who live in the North of England. Not surprisingly it is a theme that has been addictive and
Jake Attree
challenging to those who seek to create art there too.
3 York Looking North East oil on panel 49 x 60 cms 191⁄4 x 233⁄4 ins
There are powerful icons to juggle with. The North seems to be an environment where the interplay between places and their history can produce subject matter of profound and productive resonance. Jake Attree, an artist born in York, has returned
described the West Yorkshire moors of his youth as ‘a
again and again to views of that city from the Minster, in
myth-making place’ where he developed a ‘strong inner
developing degrees of abstraction. As a starting point, York
vision’, growing to ‘love the drizzle and mist of the North of
and its great church bring a set of historic and spiritual allusions
England with its sense of decay’.
rich enough to feast on as artistic subject matter. But with Attree this has furlongs more to run, as in the intimacy of his delivery, the artist infers a personal inner landscape running parallel to the city’s historical landscape, raising ideas about how narratives are generated, and memories selected.
Like Attree, Blackburn thrived on the early ties he had with the region (he was born in Huddersfield) feeding his own personal history and experience of the land into his portrayal of the landscape. However, Blackburn’s use of land is less locational than Attree’s. There is no equivalent to a York
A diverging approach to memory and place was explored
Minster here. Instead, he saw himself as part of a visionary
by the landscape artist David Blackburn, whose work was
tradition, reaching back to William Blake and Samuel Palmer,
equally rooted to the idea of the lands of the North. He
in which he strove to capture the inexpressible elements
of the natural world and the forms within it, and to give
wall, plastered, wooden, maybe dry-stone. Sometimes I find
mundane features, such as stones and trees, a sense of
nothing but marks and shapes I’d never even thought of, but
arising from a primeval narrative. Reaching, one might say,
then they lead to something else entirely.’
for the ‘eternal rocks beneath’.
This way of developing a painting through experimental
Huddersfield has given rise to another artist of distinctively
technique undoubtedly creates exciting finished results. It
Northern interest – one who enjoyed a long and fruitful
is also an intelligent and stimulating way of echoing the
friendship with David Blackburn – Maxwell Doig. Doig too has an indigenous relationship with landscape and the land, and a taste for hunting down subject matter with layers of historic resonance. Some works feature solitary buildings, such as old barns, mills and moorland houses, weathered or weathering, resilient or vulnerable to decay. The dilapidated Newsome Mill, a former Victorian textile works in Huddersfield, inspired a series of paintings. Two weeks after completing the works, the mill was destroyed by fire. ‘Perhaps this is part of my job’, Doig remarked, ‘to capture something before it disappears.’ And then, quite tellingly, ‘I think loss can be beautiful, especially in architecture. It’s the face of the life within.’ Again, as with Blackburn, as with Attree, we find the subject matter being approached by the artist is not merely a focused element of architecture, a piece of land or a location, but something fundamentally time-based, a subject with an inferred, echoing history. Importantly, Doig’s paintings also allude to these ideas of historic layering through what the surface of the works themselves reveal about his technique. Using mostly acrylic paint, he builds up layers of pigment over a coarse ground (often mixed with sawdust or paint scrapings) ‘Once I have
David Blackburn
three or four layers built up I scrape it back to the ground
4 Red Tree Study, 1987 pastel 39 x 34 cms 153⁄8 x 133⁄8 ins
hoping to find interesting textures that might suggest a
like a selected historical record. Attree’s technique, then, is linked inextricably to the subject matter of his work. The even surfaces and spaciousness of David Blackburn’s technique is a fascinating contrast to Attree’s work. Blackburn was a rarity, in that he worked largely in pastels, a medium he gleaned from his mentor Gerhart Frankl (who also inspired the artist Craigie Aitchison). This use of pastels – their direct tones, soft manoeuverability and ease of use – channelled Blackburn’s extraordinary ability to deliver an impression of luminescence (as though light was streaming through
Maxwell Doig 5 Gable End in Snow, Crosland Moor acrylic on canvas on panel 122 x 98 cms 48 x 381⁄2 ins
coloured glass), and to represent fields of colour in a way that was associative rather than descriptive. This was a technique that ended up being ideally suited to Blackburn’s ambition to capture the inexpressible elements of the natural world. In the 1960s David Blackburn embarked on three key projects
ideas that the artist is pursuing in his treatment of the
of vast and religious scope, ‘Creation’, ‘Apocalypse’ and
subject matter, his investigation into the layers of history, of
‘Resurrection’. Each of these spawned sets of key studies, and
decay, of memory, inherent in his objects of focus. Doig is
the achievement of ‘Creation’, particularly, he regarded as
not alone in this interlinking of technique and theme. Jake
an momentous stage in his career. With this early context to
Attree has also developed a highly individual technique that
his work, Blackburn’s later approach to an eternal narrative,
carries essential qualities of the themes of his work.
and his search to depict the inexpressible, attains a rich
Attree has always been assiduous in the study of art (he has been fascinated by Constable, Breughel and Constant
spiritual quality, and an underlying gravitas that allows one to welcome in a range of the artist’s interests.
Permeke, among others) and is profoundly engaged in the
The scale and scope of themes tackled by these artists – Jake
ways works of art suggest and transmit ideas. His use of a
Attree, David Blackburn and Maxwell Doig – makes them
great density of paint, building up layers of impasto to an
thought-provoking and powerful companions when their work
almost sculptural degree, clearly implies a seriousness, and
is brought together in a single show. The vision they share
points one towards the presence of ideas. The build-up of
is a dynamic force, an enviable birthright, and a remarkable
paint, and its increasingly abstract qualities, certainly begins
opportunity for an exhibition audience. Their paintings resound
to bury figuration, as well as to remake the subject matter,
with northern echoes. They come from the Elemental North.
so that the picture starts to act like a version of memory,
Sandy Mallet
Jake Attree Jake Attree was the first artist to be asked to show his work at the recently re-opened Piece Hall in Halifax, the historic Grade I architectural landmark, after its £19 million restoration programme. He works from a studio at Dean in the 1840s. Born in 1950, Attree attended York College of Art, then Liverpool Art College, and the Royal Academy of Arts from 1974 to ’77. He is an artist who has earned particular respect for working with civic and artistic projects, and collaborating with poets and writers.
6 Winter Light in the City oil on panel 46 x 46 cms 181⁄4 x 18 ins
Photograph © Huw llewelyn-Jones
Clough, an industrial mill complex in Halifax built
7 Winter Light oil pastel on card 42 x 42 cms 163⁄8 x 161⁄2 ins 8 Ancient City, Red & Grey oil pastel over collage on card 38 x 41 cms 151⁄8 x 16 ins
9 York Looking South West, Grey Light oil pastel on card 52 x 52 cms 20 3⁄8 x 20 3⁄8 ins
10 Ancient City, Blue Light oil pastel on paper 44 x 43 cms 171⁄2 x 167⁄8 ins
11 Ancient City, Red & Grey 1 oil on panel 66 x 75 cms 26 x 291⁄2 ins
12 Ancient City, Red & Grey 2 oil on panel 66 x 66 cms 26 x 257⁄8 ins
13 Golden Square oil on panel 66 x 66 cms 257⁄8 x 26 ins
14 York Looking North East (Small Version) oil on panel 27 x 34 cms 10 3⁄4 x 131⁄4 ins 15 Looking Across the Dean’s Garden oil on panel 29 x 23 cms 113⁄8 x 9 1⁄8 ins
16 Ancient City, Blue Light oil on panel 66 x 66 cms 26 x 26 ins
17 York Looking South West 1 oil pastel on paper 50 x 70 cms 19 5⁄8 x 271⁄2 ins 18 York Looking South West, Misty Morning oil pastel on paper 50 x 70 cms 195⁄8 x 271⁄2 ins
19 York Looking North East oil pastel on paper 50 x 70 cms 195⁄8 x 271⁄2 ins 20 York Looking South West 2 oil pastel on paper 53 x 73 cms 21 x 283⁄4 ins
David Blackburn 21 Oval Woodland, 1985 pastel 61 x 51 cms 24 x 201⁄8 ins
David Blackburn ‘I don’t know any artist to whom I can compare him,’ Sir Kenneth Clark wrote. ‘Blackburn is not a landscape artist, not an abstractionist in the ordinary sense. He is a painter of metamorphosis.’ Born in Huddersfield in 1939, Blackburn was one of a radical new generation studying at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to ’62, alongside David Hockney and R B Kitaj. He travelled to Australia and America in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, living and teaching abroad for extended periods, before returning to settle fully in Yorkshire. He was appointed MBE in 2015 and died the following year.
22 Stone Landscape, 2000 pastel 44 x 36 cms 17 3⁄8 x 141⁄8 ins
23 Five Studies For A Creation Series, 1964 black pastel 25 x 18 cms 97⁄8 x 71⁄8 ins (each)
24 Coast Leaf – Green, 2002 pastel 64 x 51 cms 251⁄4 x 201⁄8 ins
25 Coastal Leaf Sunset, 2002 pastel 65 x 51 cms 255⁄8 x 201⁄8 x ins
26 Crane Sea, 1988 pastel 40 x 35 cms 153⁄4 x 133⁄4 ins 27 Northern Roofs, 1995 pastel 45 x 36 cms 173⁄4 x 141⁄8 ins
28 Three Studies For An Apocalypse, 1967 pastel 32 x 26 cms 12 5⁄8 x 101⁄4 ins (each)
29 Triptych – Resurrection, 1962 black chalk 34 x 26 cms 133⁄8 x 101⁄4 ins (each)
30 Pink Metropolis, 1993 pastel 42 x 38 cms 161⁄2 x 15 ins
31 Leaf As Beach, 2000 pastel 44 x 36 cms 173⁄8 x 141⁄8 ins
32 Green Evening, 1996 pastel and collage 42 x 54 cms 161⁄2 x 211⁄4 ins
Maxwell Doig ‘Looking at Maxwell Doig’s paintings is an experience in modern classicism’, says the author Andrew Sanderson. ‘We are seduced by the carefully ordered compositions, by the quality of light and his masterly use of technique. The paintings are quiet but have an immediate effect and seem to grow in intensity with prolonged viewing.’ Born in 1966, Doig attended Manchester School of Art before going to the Slade School of Art from 1988 to ’90. He works from a small first floor studio at his home near Huddersfield, continually journeying out to the surrounding West Riding landscape to investigate subject matter.
33 Drystone Wall, Skapegoat Hill acrylic on Velin Arches cream paper 48 x 69 cms 19 x 27 ins
34 Pennine Farmhouse, Holme acrylic on canvas on panel 64 x 86 cms 25 x 34 ins
35 Old Warehouse Manchester acrylic on canvas on panel 64 x 84 cms 25 x 33 ins
36 Yorkshire Cobble acrylic on canvas on panel 64 x 90 cms 25 x 351⁄2 ins
37 Newsome Mill Interior acrylic on canvas on panel 84 x 64 cms 33 x 25 ins
38 Storehouse, Linthwaite acrylic on canvas on panel 102 x 75 cms 40 x 291⁄2 ins
39 Gable End, October acrylic on canvas on panel 102 x 75 cms 40 x 291⁄2 ins
40 Newsome Mill, March 2017 acrylic on canvas on panel 66 x 92 cms 26 x 36 ins
CDXXXVII
ISBN 978-1-910993-29-3 Publication No: CDXXXVII Published by David Messum Fine Art Š David Messum Fine Art
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