Simon Carter
I wanted it to become more like a painting and less like a picture. Simon Carter on making changes to his work
Transf igured Space Figuration is a curious word. For many artists and critics, it is one term in a pair of polar opposites: abstraction and figuration. Typically, an ‘abstract’ painter uses colours and forms as compositional building blocks, purportedly sufficient in themselves, although they may still be utilised as a means of communicating feelings, even profound truths, as with many of Rothko’s paintings. By contrast, the ‘figurative’ painter takes perceived objects, people or simply nature as a starting point for a series of pictorial deliberations. Here, perceptions that have their origin in the world of natural appearances are transformed into brush marks, daubs and splotches of pigment, becoming part of that illusory space we call a painting.
2.
Watercolour for ‘Essex Coast, Bird Hide’, 2014
watercolour 24 x 32 cms 9 1⁄2 x 12 5⁄8 ins 3. Essex Coast, Bird Hide, 2014 acrylic on canvas 130 x 160 cms 511⁄8 x 63 ins
Looking at even the most ‘abstract’ of Simon Carter’s works, we find ourselves haunted by a suspicion that they, too, derive ultimately from the world of nature. And we would be right. Asked about his work, Simon will immediately start to tell you when a particular picture was painted, the exact location it depicts, pointing out a zigzag path, a pond amidst the marshes, a bird hide, only to break off with an embarrassed smile, knowing that none of this is really vital to our appreciation of his paintings. Rather, these things are vital only to him. Simon is quietly insistent that, as far as he is concerned, the whole business of painting is about seeking to hold fast specific moments that are all part of an intense process of visual observation. The outcome of this process is a series of marks which end up obstinately lodged on the picture surface; yet it is the marks themselves that are important, not
an important signifier denoting the artist’s perception of space in the real world, while also threatening to occupy increasing amounts of equally ‘real’ space on the surface of the canvas. Just as revealing of his working methods are Simon’s drawings, among them dozens of tiny, rapidly executed sketches that he makes whenever he starts to engage with a new group of motifs. For him, these are important first steps on the path that leads ultimately to the finished painting. He has even claimed that he sees the challenge facing him as being simply to ‘paint the drawings’. In reality, the divergences between the drawings and the paintings are often more striking than the similarities. This is partly due to the evolutionary process by which work on the latter progresses by fits and starts from one stage to the next, encompassing many changes along the way, some of them radical. But the drawings, too, have a tendency to develop from small-scale, initial sketches into larger, more elaborate workings-out of the same subject. More elaborate still are the beautiful charcoal studies: for example, cat. nos. 9, 12, 26 and 27. Because of their high degree of finish, many of these demand to be seen not as sketches but as what used to be called ‘presentation drawings’ – that is, as works of art in their own right.
12. Drawing for ‘Grey Sea, Sandy charcoal 30 x 40 cms 115⁄8 x 15 3⁄4 ins 13. Grey Sea, Sandy Hook, 2013 acrylic on canvas 110 x 120 cms 431⁄4 x 471⁄4 ins
Hook’, 2013
Even so, it is easy to see what Simon means by ‘simply painting the drawings’. What evidently captivates him is the immediacy and spontaneity of drawing, compared with the prolonged labour needed to finish a painting. On one occasion he remarked somewhat wistfully: ‘You know, I draw really quickly, spontaneously and quite naturally ... I just wish I could paint the way I draw.’ If that remark betrays a certain dissatisfaction, as that great pioneer of abstract painting Wassily Kandinsky once wrote, ‘I would wish that same dissatisfaction on all painters – for all time.’
Peter Vergo
Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Essex
22. Drawing II for ‘Pale graphite and oil pastel 21 x 28 cms 8 1⁄4 x 11 insa
Autumn Light, Sandy Hook’, 2014
23. Pale Autumn Light, Sandy acrylic on canvas 110 x 120 cms 431⁄4 x 47 1⁄4 ins
Hook, 2014
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