Michael Honnor, catalogue

It’s mid-June and I’m crouched among the rocks in the depths of the Dart Gorge. Thick with oak trees on both steep sides it’s a place the sun illuminates only at the height of summer. I’m at the top of a long pool in the river where the powerful current slows and spreads before quickening again as it tumbles away into the light a hundred metres down stream.

With no time to lose I begin. All the currents of water, cloud, light and shadow are alive and breathing. The movement and change are infinite - you never step in the same river twice! With luck I’ll find my way to the moment when my shapes and marks and colours spark into the first electric hint of evocation, something always new and so particular that for me it can only come from being in the live drama of the landscape. This is the point to pause and begin the dangerous process of refinement and intensification. Dangerous because art can also dull the living thing.

Almost all my paintings begin life beside running water in the sun, wind and rain. Each time there’s the chance that all the old skills and expectations that I bring with me will be stung into life by the alchemy of what I find in the rough fragile landscape. This is the inexhaustible

MICHAEL HONNOR

paintings in the sun, wind and rain

Here is a painter wholly engaged with the business of interpreting and abstracting from landscape what it is that makes up its atmosphere and vigour. His painting can literally be described as thrilling in its inventiveness and freedom.

Caroline McCadam Clark, artist

THACKERAY GALLERY, LONDON - 21 October 2022

right CORNISH SEA mixed media on linen 49x49 cm

DARK SKY AT DRIMNIN mixed media on linen 41x51 cm

GREAT

right

An evening of extraordinary dance. Crests like torn ruffs, high wheeling sea birds and chorus of wind and rain. Glimpse of the last sun.

DEVON SEA

TO RUSHY BAY mixed media on linen 54x43 cm

Winter morning a mile from the sea in this long Devon estuary. As the tide turnsthe silver of the water threads its way back through the reeds and shallow mudflats. A haven for birds.

right JANUARY MORNING AT EFFORD mixed media on linen 86x100 cm

three paintings THE WILD FLOWERS OF OLMI mixed media on linen 46x39 cm each

EARLY SEA mixed media on linen

CALM SEA mixed media on linen cm

left LOCH SUNART, SEPTEMBER mixed media on linen

GLASDRUM SUNRISE mixed media on linen 49x49 cm

right EVENING AT BLACK CLIFF mixed media on linen 43x38 cm

An early morning fret lifting and breaking to reveal patches of deep blue. Sea at low ebb. Filtered sunlight catching the shallow waves.

right SKY CLEARING AT TREBECCA ROCK mixed media on linen 100x100 cm

A morning of intense shifting light on Bryher. Inner safety of the islands encircled by the ocean horizon. Tiny distant marks of fierce spray and spume on Atlantic rocks.

TO ORONSAY, AUTUMN mixed media on linen 41x51

AFTERNOON mixed media on panel 50x66 cm

FIRST LIGHT, HOIST POINT mixed media on linen 29x42 SEA mixed media on linen 49x49 cm

THE SOUND MULL

Early summer morning on the South Devon coast. Sky clearing. Very calm. Blaadderwrack.

right DEVON SEA, EARLY SUN mixed media on paper 96x103 cm

CORNISH SEA ROUGH mixed media on linen 86x86 cm

Michael Honnor was born in 1944. He studied English at Worcester College, Oxford and painting and printmaking at Hornsey Art College and Byam Shaw School of Art.

He has had as many as fifty solo shows over the past sixty years and since 1988 he has shown regularly at the Thackeray and Sue Rankin gallery in London.

His work has been exhibited throughout the U.K. including at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, the Flying Colours Gallery, Edinburgh, the R.A, London, the Royal Albert Museum, Exeter, the R.W.A, Bristol, the Bowie Gallery, Devon, Bristol Arts Centre, Green Hill Arts, Devon, together with a touring show with Arts South West and a major retrospective at Make South West.

He is also well known as a printmaker, in particular as a lithographer, for which he has won two national printmaking awards at the R.W.A, Bristol and the National Printmaking Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. He was founder and director of the celebrated Dartington Print Workshop, 1975-2020, and currently director of the Honnor Press in Devon.

His work is in many collections in Britain and abroad including Barclay’s Bank, the Cooperative Society Ltd, the Admiralty, London, Dartington Hall, Devon, the Mellon Collection, U.S.A, Citibank, The London Institute of Education, the National Library of Wales, Worcester College, Oxford, the V and A Museum, London, and at several British Embassies and High Commissions.

A monograph “Michael Honnor Paintings” and other books are available at the Thackeray Gallery.

front cover DEVON SEA, EARLY SUN mixed media on paper 96x103 cm