jeremy annear

Transcription

1 jeremy annear

2 Front Cover Folding Forms I 2012 oil on drift board 28 x 40 cm approx a kind of music 13th october - 4th november 2012 jeremy annear First published in 2012 by Campden Gallery Ltd High Street, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire GL55 6AG All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electrical, mechanical or otherwise, without first seeking the permission of the copyright owners and the publishers. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and here is only the dance. T.S. Eliot the Four Quartets All images in this catalogue are protected by copyright and should not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Details of the copyright holder to be obtained from Campden Gallery. Copyright 2012 Campden Gallery Ltd. ISBN: Photography by Steve Russell Portrait by Martin Howse ARPS 2

3 a kind of music Converted chapels can make fine studios none more so than the Italianate yellow-painted meeting house in the far-west of Cornwall hailed by John Betjeman in the book First and Last Loves. Jeremy Annear has lived and worked and perfectly fitted here for many years. In the enchantment of the Lizard Peninsula where deep greens meets download ochres - where light floods and over what seems to be a strand of land strung between two oceans this spirited and spiritual artist paints in a viewless, noiseless and very orderly white room. He writes in his notebook: My studio is silent. The silence is deep and tangible like a cathedral chapel or a museum, a grey light of endeavour and commitment illuminates the space that has witnessed my highest human aspiration and the daily pathway of transcendence. A lack of sound striking a note of amazing contrast in a most gregarious household is all the more vital since music is an incredibly powerful force in the life of this artist. His eclectic taste ranges from jazz to choral and as he works a kind of music plays in his head and ultimately reflects in the rhythms and harmonies of his pictures. Indeed, Annear considers each image on canvas or board or paper to be a movement in the single score which will be a life-long painting. Such is his seriousness of purpose and sense of creative progression that, though thinking himself an artist when still a teenager, he first exhibited his pictures in his thirties. Raised in Devon, amid a heady mix of culture, creativity, classical music and religion, he experienced an early artistic epiphany. I was 13, in 1962, when I made my first seriously considered oil painting and vowed that this would be my life, he says. Our family holidays were spent in Cornwall, at a wonderful coastal hamlet a stone s throw from where I now live. Regular visits to St Ives exposed me to the Orthostat VI 2012 oil on board 33 x 23 cm Alphaspace series studio wall with collected objects on shelf above 2 3

4 edge of the Western rush into a new world of Modernism beat, protest, jazz, folk, abstraction. The last proved the most compelling. I was deeply affected by St Ives s abstraction without really knowing anything about it, he continues. Of course I now know that I was drawn to all those wonderful St Ives s artists (Nicholson, Lanyon, Hepworth, Frost, Hilton, Heron). From there I started my long love affair with European Modernism. Braque is his painting grandfather and exposure to the works of Klee and Miro also spurred his artistic evolution. He left the 1981 Picasso s Picassos show at the Hayward Gallery in London with the message go to it. Six years later he gave up teaching and other work distractions to live as an artist. He recalls: Sadly it coincided with a time of deep family loss and personal trauma. But that also gave me a great sense that I couldn t mess up on commitment to the disciplines of full-time painting. In the past 25 years Annear s pictures have been collected from America to Australia (with Aboriginal art in turn adding another strong influence) and he has also worked in Germany and exhibited widely in Europe. Fully at home in his adopted Cornwall raising a family and partnering painter Judy Buxton, who works in an adjoining studio he has described himself as a painter, sculptor and print-maker who rarely finds time to make three-dimensional objects. In fact, he sculpts his pictures - building in relief-like layers to produce ravishing textures, surfaces and edges. He says: I constantly play at laying paint into paint, wet into wet. I have always wanted to throw lots of paint onto my supports. Part of the deepest satisfaction of painting for me has been to achieve exactly what I want with the paint. This skill develops over time after many muddles and messes. My compulsion to paint stems from an obsessive, neurotic need to do it. My crafting process of practised and automatic movement and gesture can be akin to a right-handed painter left handling the viscous mass of paint to form it into something. That allows sufficient struggle to free oneself into a deeper, broader place. His painting generally starts with an earth colour covering the canvas. He then draws into this wet ground - likening the drawing to a ritual dance. And that s a great analogy because, while many have detected the outlines of still-lives and seascapes, a dynamic momentum is achieved with curved and angular shapes which might be stylised bodies. This is the art of the sensual and the celebratory, not the austere and ascetic. He adds of his painterly dance: It has rules and motifs but within these its form changes each time. Part of the ritual is never to repeat the pattern and even if one tries, it distorts and develops into something else like a Chinese whisper. Through the ritual release of the dance the mind opens a window into a deeper space and the way becomes clear. This way presents obstacles, challenges and choices that become the journey through which a painting is made. To be at one (body, soul, mind) in the process is the silent beat of the music. In the acts of layering - carving and incising, adding and obliterating, reinforcing and changing - the linear often gives way to shape and space, becoming boundary rather than path and sometimes both. For instance a black line giving way to an ochre shape and leaving its traces bleeding from the edge might invite that edge to be met by a violet tinted umber field. Such sculptural physicality also has philosophical, psychological and spiritual layers. And it is this chemistry which produces the alchemy of Jeremy Annear s art. Ian Collins, September 2012 Ian Collins is an art writer and curator whose recent books include monographs on the painters John McLean and John Craxton Counterpoint I (Blue Moon) 2012 oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm 4 5

5 Folding Form With Coiled Line (Version II) 2012 oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm Folding Forms I (Maritime) 2011 oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm 6 7

6 Random Geometry I 2012 oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm 8 9

7 Line on White II 2012 oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm Line on White III 2012 oil on canvas 50 x 60 cm 10 11

8 Folding Form (Gathered) XI 2012 oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm Opposite Folding Forms (Biomorphic) V 2012 oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm 12 13

9 Line Form II (Soft Tone) 2012 oil on canvas 120 x 160 cm 14 15

10 Red Field (Peristalith) 2012 oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm Red Field II (Bounded by Black) 2012 oil on canvas 70 x 100 cm 16 17

11 Alphaspace I - VI 2012 oil on canvas 30 x 25 cm 18 19

12 Pariodolia (Creased) 2012 oil on canvas 70 x 50 cm Cohesive Structure I 2012 oil on canvas 50 x 70 cm 20 21

13 Genius Loci III 2012 oil on board 26 x 34 cm Genius Loci V 2012 oil on board 26 x 34 cm 22 23

14 Eclipse II 2012 oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm Opposite Counterpoint (Black Disc) 2012 oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm 24 25

15 Folding Form (Leafed) 2012 oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm Genius Loci VIII 2012 oil on board 20 x 27 cm Genius Loci IX 2012 oil on board 20 x 27 cm 26 27

16 Random Geometry II 2012 oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm 28 29

17 Cohesive Structure II 2012 oil on canvas 50 x 70 cm Pathway of Desire IV 2012 oil on canvas 30 x 80 cm 30 31

18 Line on White 2012 oil on canvas 50 x 70 cm Opposite Folding Forms IV (Gathered) 2011 oil on canvas 60 x 80 cm 32 33

19 Orthostat IV 2012 oil on canvas 33 x 23 cm Orthostat I 2012 oil on board 33 x 23 cm 34 35

20 Red Field (Yellow Blue) 2012 oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm 36 37

21 The Gift Into the studio and through the old school doors We made our way, Breath held I paused. Those canvases, Like a light switched on brilliant Graphic Life Design. A leap in my heart, surely something Divine? The Rainbow, Primary colours Just three from heaven, But yours to multiply. Endlessly Creative Myriad lines, Now seen on these canvases (and glimpsed the wing of that elusive butterfly). And those sombre hues, Earth browns and cloudy grey, Waiting for the sure return Of the sun s bright rays. For the numinous peace Of these sheltering walls Just grateful praise. Joyce Annear 2011/12 My mother has given me permission to reproduce this. I know she will forgive me for proudly revealing that she is only two years off a century. She has been my lifelong advocate and friend and shown me the true meaning of honesty and integrity in the creative process. Pathway of Desire (Totem) I 2012 oil on canvas 100 x 40 cm JEREMY ANNEAR Exeter College of Art. Painting and Printmaking Rolle College, Exmouth, Devon. (B.ED) Assistant Director, Dyrons Art Centre, Devon Lecturer South Devon College Director Ryder s Gallery, Dartington College of Art, Devon Member of the Penwith Society of Artists Member of the Newlyn Society of Artists 1993 Elected on to the Council of Management, Newlyn Art Gallery, 1993 Elected Committee Member Newlyn Society of Artists 1997/98 Visiting lecturer, Cheltenham College of Art SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2011 Messum s, London 2010 Forensic Traces - Campden Gallery 2009/02/00/98/97 Messum s, London 2007 Wet Paint Gallery, Cirencester,Glos [Joan Miro & Marco Toro] 2007/04/01/98 New Millenium Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall 1993 Artco Gallery, Leipzig, Germany 1993 Porthmeor Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall 1992 International Celtic Festival, Lorient, France Galerie Passage, Berlin, Germany 1991 Galerie Maeder, Berlin, Germany Galerie Altes Rathaus (with Margaret Kelly/Wolfgang Lehmann) Galerie Haus Martin, Bremen, Germany 1989 The Salthouse Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall The Underground Gallery, Bath GROUP EXHIBITIONS Jeremy Annear exhibits widely in many mixed shows in the UK and Europe PUBLICATIONS, AWARDS 2007 Painting, European Modernism and the Cornish art scene in the 1980 s. Interview with Rupert White St Ives Art Colony in Transition, Peter Davies, St Ives Printing and Publishing Co 2004 Exhibition Catalogue New Millennium Gallery foreword by James Aitchison Crossing the Boundary for unaccompanied cello. Composed by James Aitchison after the painting Crossing the Boundary for an exhibition performance at the New Millennium Gallery performed by Nick Roberts and the Coull Quartet The Meeting a poem (Published by Halsgrove, 2002) written for the catalogue by Robert Vas Dias Catching the Wave Contemporary Art and Artists in Cornwall by Tom Cross (Published by Halsgrove 2002) 2002 Exhibition Catalogue. New Works, Messum s Contemporary 2001 Galleries Review. Showing in St Ives, Petronilla Silver 2000 Exhibition catalogue (Foreword by Norbert Lynton), Messum s London 1998/97 Exhibition Catalogue, Messum s, London (Forward by John Russell Taylor) 1996 Drawing towards the End of the Century, Newlyn Society of Artists Publication 1994 St Ives Revisited - innovators and followers by Peter Davies (Bakehouse Publications) 1991 Award Kreissparkasse, Bremen, Germany 1991/92 DAAD Scholarship (Atelierhaus Worpswede) Germany Listed in Who s who in British Art and The Dictionary of Artists in Britain since

22 PROJECTS 2008 Budapest/Velence Project: Collaboration with the artist Szegedi Csaba, Galeria Scheffer, Budapest and presentation to The University Of Arts and Design Budapest 2008 D Silva Editions: Editioned six new screen-prints at the studios of D Silva Editions St Just Cornwall 2008 Artsound Dialogue: A continued studio based experimental dialogue With composer Jim Aitchison Artsound.co.uk A collaboration with composer Jim Aitcheson Coleridge Productions Andy Russo The Coull Quartet and The Sacconi Quartet COLLECTIONS Lazard Bros Ionian Trust The Royal Holloway Collection The Royal West of England Academy Garden Court Chambers Lincolns Inn Fields, London Workhouse Design Consultency, Truro, Cornwall Dorrien-Smith, Tresco, Cornwall Private Collections in UK Europe Australia & USA 40 41

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