Mark Spray. The Final Pilgrim

Transcription

1 Mark Spray The Final Pilgrim

2 Mark Spray is an artist with a profound empathy for landscape. Distinct from the work of landscape artists whose focus is primarily visual, Spray s work speaks of an altogether more conflicted and raw relationship with the land. Expressing instead a sensory and psychological experience of place, this collection of moody, dark and deeply textured paintings are at once strangely hypnotic and menacingly bleak. Known for a multifaceted approach to his work, Spray orders his artistic life into a series of long running projects, the course of which he allows to develop unhindered from their beginning. Often taking several years from start to completion, Spray describes the influences on his extended projects as constantly evolving. Accordingly, A Final Pilgrim has many undercurrents: initially intended to explore the idea of pilgrimage and self understanding, the project has shifted and continued to develop from its point of conception. Inspired by Goya s Black Painting A Final Pilgrim and the poetic work The Spiritual Canticle by St John of the Cross, two voices that have remained constant for this project, further influences have been absorbed from Spray s love of poetry, literature and music. Preparation for the works included in A Final Pilgrim took the form of a series of solitary journeys to some of the most inaccessible parts of the United Kingdom. Driven by an uncompromising wanderlust, the importance of Spray s artistic journeys cannot be underestimated, bringing about as they do a balanced state which is vital for the work. Committed to developing a deeply personal, meditative relationship with our most remote and hostile environments, this collection of works is the result of a two year project absorbed in coasts, cliff tops and rocky outcrops from the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in England, Bardsey Island in Wales, Iona, Staffa and Mull in Scotland to the remote monastery of Skellig Michael in Ireland. Concerned with ideas of circularity between the external and internal, and developing a creative dialogue between experience of landscape and expression of self, a vital part of Spray s intensely applied artistic discipline includes a unique approach to his studio practice: intending to evoke the internal essence of place, A Final Pilgrim s mixed media works are composed of oil paints and a wealth of natural materials collected from, and thus dictated by, the landscape in which he is working. Spray even sketches his landscapes with charcoal made from the wood he finds on site. For Spray the process of studio painting is as reflective and self directing as his lengthy preparatory work. Constantly walking the line between abstraction and representational elements, initial studio time involves the breaking up and grinding of rock, earth, sand, chalk, flint, grit, gravel and wood, which are mixed with a variety of media. Often working on several paintings simultaneously and following an instinctive pattern of application and extrication that facilitates a natural weathering of surface, Spray continues to let the project dictate its own path, responding to the natural progression of his work as it unfolds.

3 Spray s own immersion in physical and psychological seclusion takes the form of extended solitary journeys through the landscape. These, combined with both long standing and incidental influences, become the framework around which each project takes form. A particular inspiration for Spray s paintings combines his fascination for landscape with a lifelong love of poetry. On Bardsey Island where the poet R.S. Thomas was once vicar of nearby Aberdaron and was significantly involved in the protection of Bardsey, the poetic work Shadows became an influence on the project. I close my eyes. The darkness implies your presence. The shadow of your steep mind on my world. I shiver in it. It is not your light that can blind us: it is the splendour of your darkness. R.S. Thomas

4 At the Approach of Dawn (Bardsey, Wales) 70 x 70 cm 1,750

5 Keeping Watch by Night (Bardsey, Wales) 70 x 70 cm 1,750

6 Murmuring Solitude (Lindisfarne, Northumberland) 70 x 70 cm 1,750

7 We Shall Enter In (Lindisfarne, Northumberland) 70 x 70 cm 1,750

8 Heading north on his first trip to Scotland, prompted by a reading of the book Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, the next journey had the usual concentration of wanderlust and found me travelling between the islands of Iona, Staffa, and Mull, drawing all the way. Staffa was a location that creatively was more than I could have hoped for

9 Touch of Fire (Staffa, Scotland) 80 x 40 cm 1,600

10 The Silent Music (Fingal s Cave, Staffa, Scotland) 30 x 30 cm 595

11 To the Deep (Fingal s Cave, Staffa, Scotland) 30 x 30 cm 595

12 The last journey for A Final Pilgrim took Spray to the remote island of Skellig Michael off the west coast of Ireland, accessible for only a very few days of the year due to rough Atlantic swells. In a landscape that for 600 years was a centre of monastic life for early Christians, Spray experienced the spartan conditions of Europe s most isolated hermitage, situated almost at the summit of the 230 metre high rock, spending several nights drawing and painting and watching the sun set and rise over the Skelligs. For the paintings inspired by Skellig Michael, he collected additional materials from the nearby island of Valentia, the only source of external material that was shipped onto the island for the construction of the monastery s oratory.

13 I Gave You My Hand (Skellig Michael, Ireland) 70 x 70 cm 1,750

14 Reuben Colley Fine Arts 50 & 52 St Mary's Row, Moseley, Birmingham. B13 8JG Tel : enquiries@reubencolleyfinearts.co.uk Opening Times Monday 10am until 6pm Tuesday - 10am until 6pm Wednesday - 10am until 6pm Thursday - Closed Friday - 10am until 6pm Saturday - 10am until 6pm Sunday By appointment only