Edinburgh - Scottish National Gallery

Here's my final tribute to the galleries on Princes Street / The Mound Edinburgh.

I was surprised at how the Contemporary and National Galleries are linked,  they are made up of three interconnected buildings, right in the heart of Edinburgh. The Gallery is home to a major part of Scotland’s sensational national collection of fine art; the Academy is one of Europe’s premier venues for international exhibitions; and the Gardens Entrance, which lies beneath the two buildings, provides an entry way directly in to both the galleries and museums and also various lecture halls and learning areas.  Up on the surface though, all you see from Princes street are two Baroque style Victorian buildings based on the Athenian them and Pantheon.  Underneath them though, lies the treasures and public areas such as cafes and shops.  A wonderful juxtaposition of post-modern and old Victorian architecture has been combined into a brilliantly developed public space.  It's well worth a visit, just to see the architecture!


The following paintings by Steven Campbell, 1953-2007 were of particular interest to me as we progressed from the contemporary to the classical / National Gallery sections.  His work, being a turning point in Scottish art which combines the painterly classical style with more contemporary re-presentation using audio;

His themes and reflections of life events seemed to be from a rather disturbed individual at first glance.  He was clearly sensitive to a number of these events which have transformed int the dream like paintings he rendered.  However, on closer examination, there also seems to be a sense of both humour and fascination of design that the artist chose for his subjects.  This fascination for design is comes through from the time that the artist spent initially as an engineer, and the sense of humour is manifested by a sound recorder that is constantly re-playing a 1980s classic french pop song, within the exhibition.

 

Further into the rest of the National Gallery I made some initial notes of the classical paintings to be found there too;

   

 The similarities between Bellotto and Canaletto are easy to see from the above two examples.  The painting below too has the classical perspective landscapes, - only just discovered.

And then Van-Gough.  People often criticise Van-Gogh for "not being able to paint" or some other derogatory remarks.  Well, I can assure them that he could!...  The example below is one of his more famous pieces which came from a series made of observing peasant farmers, - the most famous of his paintings of that period probably is "The Potato Eaters", which he painted in April 1885,  in Nuenen, Netherlands.  I think it is also important to remember that Van Gough was still very much in his learning phase, well before his transformation into the style which so many people criticise unjustly and unfairly.  The original Potato Eaters is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

And then on to another modern artist who again sometimes unfairly gets criticism, one Eduard Degas.  He was fascinated by rythm and dancers. Degas frequently observed the dancers of the Paris Opéra, and was captivated by their grace and discipline. In this sculpture, Degas shows a dancer practising the ‘arabesque penchée’, a position that requires tremendous control. The dancer must stay steady on one foot while raising the other leg as high and as straight as possible. Degas made the original wax model of this figure between 1882 and 1895. Following Degas’s death, Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard made bronze casts of the figure, and designated each one a letter of the alphabet between A and T. This cast is inscribed ‘G’, and the number sixteen is incised above the letter. This number refers to the subject matter; all the casts Hébrard made of Degas’s models of dancers were numbered 1 to 37.

 

I don't think any study of paintings of the late 19th century is complete without one example from the great master of the time, Paul Cezanne (1839 to 1906)).   In this penultimate painting, "The Big Trees" which was painted late in Cezzane's life around 1900 to 1902, he was experimenting through painting rocks, trees, foliage and vegetation.  In this painting, he seems to have left white spaces of the canvas actually showing through, and at the upper third of the picture the branches seem to twist in a bizarrely flat yet angular fashion, - some say that this is an example which lead on to the formation of cubism, which dominated the next few years of Pablo Piccasso and Georges Braque, who very much took their lead and influence from Cezzane in the next development of Art's journey.

Georges Seurat's Alfalfa Fields near St Denis, is my final chosen piece in the Scottish National Gallery.  I chose this simply because of the amazing detail that the painting conjures up of a spring meadow in full bloom.  The other interesting point to note is how Seurat recorded the beginnings of a more industrial landscape in the far background of the painting.  Georges Seurat was particularly interested in the combinations of placing colours next to each other to produce a third colour.  His technique, known as Pointillism, can be seen very clearly in this painting of the Alfalfa fields near St Denis.  He is remembered as a Post-Impressionist rather than an Impressionist, even though he was painting at the same time as Monet, Renoir and the other impressionists.

Further works at Edinburgh Gallaries - Christine Borland

The next works within the Edinburgh Gallery for Contemporary Art were pieces collected by the Artist Christine Borland.  This particular exhibit was of serious interest to me as it explores the concept of perception and image as inculcated by words alone.  Allow me to explain. The artist created a description of one of the most feared and illusive characters of the 20th century, that being of Joseph Mengele, the infamous and despised Nazi doctor who carried out innumerable experiments upon incarcerated Jews, in the interests of "science".   This is of particular stimulus to me as this individual was one of the few fascist war criminals who escaped Germany at the end of world war two, and a whole set of mythologies seem to have developed as to where he actually escaped to.  It is thought that he traveled to South America, - the place of my own birth.  No one knows what he really looked like as there are very few photos of him.  What Christine Borland has done is to provide a standard description to a select group of six key sculptors and asked them to create busts of the description accordingly.  The following works are actually those sculptor's output.

Trying to re-start and getting some new inspiration... Edinburgh, - David Shrigley

Well, it's been  a few weeks since my last blog, sorry that I dropped the bomb-shell about my dear brother passing away so suddenly.  Most of the last few weeks has been spent trying to get my head around what John's finances were all about and also sorting out his home etc.  The funeral arrangements too, which took up a sizeable chunk of my attention, but I'm glad to say, went ahead without any hitches.

So, after all of that, my lovely wife and I spent some time up in Edinburgh, both to get over the loss of John, the funeral etc, but also as a rather muted 15th Wedding Anniversary break.   The good part from an artistic point of view (in addition to having four full days of my wife's attention, and vice-versa), was a visit to Edinburgh's Gallery for Contemporary Art, and also the National Gallery for Scotland.

Both sites are virrtually under one roof, although they do occupy two buildings right in the centre of Edinburgh, just off Prince's Street.

The contemporary gallery was the first one to be scrutinized, - it was here that we found one of my favorite contemporary artists whom I've mentioned in previous blogs, that being one David Shrigley...

I love the simplicity of this artist's work, as it seems he can find humour in the most mundane aspects of "being human"...  The exhibition in Edinburgh courts the usual modus operandi of his, in that pieces are created in simple black & white, yet reflect (metaphorically speaking), the vibrancy of very day living.  

A major feature of this exhibition are the clay / pot wellington boots.  It doesn't take long for me to relise the message David is trrying to convey, - the ease of which he trieshard not to make the visual clues too difficult.  Indeed, he has said in inteerviews, "I don't want my art to be a cryptic crossword puzzle", - in other words, it should be easy for thhe viewer to "get"the gist of his message.         

The exhibition by David Shrigley was (as often isin his case) a slightly tongue-in-cheek observation of what we are all marching towards, that being Death of course.

 Clearly, this was a subject quite near to the bone for me and still very raw in my mind following the previous weeks activities, and yet, I felt that Mr Shrigley had quite sensitively captured a highly poignant theme...  I was not offended in any way by this as his works do have a slightly detached from reality quality about them, and so can easily be accomodated.

It's been a horrible week....

Well, where do I start?

- It's been a really difficult week for me as my dear old brother, John, passed away suddenly and quite unexpectedly last Sunday.  My drawing has virtually ceased for the time being, I just about managed to hold it together to sketch a bunch of pink roses in a vase over this weekend, but I've not really felt like doing anything much.  Apart from sorting out John's finances and estate, I've been left quite numb...


John was only 56.  He was not only my oldest brother, but probably the nearest thing I had as a best friend (apart from my wonderful wife Julie, who has been truly a rock to rely upon).   I used to see John anything from twice or three times a week, or at least fortnightly at other spells; and even then the being together was sprinkled with lots of phone calls in between.   There's going to be a huge hole in our lives and I'm only now, a week / ten days or so later, realising how big this hole will be.

Life Drawing at the Sheffield Millenium Gallery & continuing my sketch practice

Life drawing at the Millennium, Sheffield 

Another weekly session at the Life Drawing class in Sheffield helped to crystallize my realization that when drawing men, it's really all about straight lines and angles at first, in order to establish proportions, shapes and angles, together with relationships between all the above to give a framework to the drawings.

The model was quite an older gentleman this time, and quite short.  Again this made for challenging drawing  practice, especially when trying to capture form in the quick 3  x 3 minute sketches

When drawing the female form, then it's not straight lines but all about curves.  These curves have tangents, and they have relationships to proportions and other shapes in the same was as for drawing men, but there is clearly this difference when starting each life drawing, depending on the gender of the subject.


The foreshortened leg caught me out again!.

And I probably over corrected the leg length on the next pose!

The next sketch was better (Left), but the final pose where both legs are foreshortened prooved that I'm not finding negative space and shading properly.  I must practice here!





I've inter-spaced my own earlier studies of the chair and also the drawings copied from the great masters here as I know that my life drawing today took a negative spin.  I was much less impressed with my work this week.  I think I know what I'm doing wrong, but I am finding it hard to apply it when I am under pressure.  This is what life drawing does. - It puts the artist into a different state of anxiety, especially as the mind is not only drawing a nude and has to also deal with all the pre-programmed notions of inhibitions, morals / ethical challenges and so on.  I'm just not removing my mind far enough to truly look at the negative spaces in isolation enough....  I know I can do this, - the chairs and studies below prove it...

It's a bit like setting up the foundations or scaffolding on to which  you can then lay more representative curves and facets.

Finding negative shapes, angles and curves made this chair a good subject to practice on....

  I'm definitely feeling the benefit of these drawing sessions.  I'm  a lot more comfortable now, I've overcome my own barriers, embarrassment and mature inhibitions to seeing a nude subject, and I genuinely feel I am making some slow, but positive, improvement.   My continued used of the Betty Edwards drawing course is also helping, having made a number of drawings recently for this self paced course too as can be seen above, but these are done in the comfort of my own home studio, not on public display like at the gallery!