By all accounts the German artist Eberhard Ross has had a terrific show, so this post is a plug for him and his terrific work.
Below is short trailer for a great short documentary commissioned by the gallery that gives a great insight into Ross' ideas and way of working.
Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.
Funny how doors open into new ventures.Over the last ten years whenever it's been suggested that I might consider doing prints of my paintings, I have deferred on the basis that the examples I have seen are in the main flat and lifeless, with colour reproduction that was generally pretty hit and miss.
And then over the summer a conversation with Rohini, a design journalist and interior stylist http://rohiniwahi.com/wp/ who had featured one of my paintings on her blog some years ago, convinced me to dip my in the water and explore doing a one off print for her.
The results has been a complete revelation to me. I've been working with the fine art printers Harwood King who have been really impressive at each stage of the process, not only getting this first print done, but in advising on the set of prints I have now gone on to do - images of which I've added below.
So here I am, now doing prints, which I really never thought I would, and enjoying it!
Atmosphere: Atlantic Light
Each print is a signed limited edition of 50, giclee and silkscreen on 330grms Somerset paper,
The prints are available from Four Square Fine Arts at £275 each.
Natural History VI the upper horizontal piece,at the AAF London last week. It featured in the previous post being worked on at an early stage. So, now bought by a nice couple from Hackney, it goes its own way and closes a cycle. I'm sure had it remained in the studio, one day I would have seen new possibilities or directions and begun working back into it again,and perhaps in that way we are always painting the same painting. I like the quote by Arshile Gorky,
"I never finish a painting - I just stop working on it for a while"
Below a couple more images from the stand of Four Square Fine Arts
In a previous post Everything Flows I put in an image of a student in the studio on work experience, mixing up the predictability in my own work, by having him pour the paint. Here just after pouring the paint, he's deciding how it should move around the surface.
Below are three stages of a painting that was worked on over the course of a year. Often, I couldn't see where to go with it, I would put paint on then rub it off, sometimes nothing would happen for a week, except just looking and looking to see if I could find a clue or way in, which reminds me of a great quote by Matisse;
"The next time I return to the work, if I discover a weakness in the unity, I find my way back by means of the weakness - I return through the breach- and I conceive the whole afresh.Thus the whole thing comes alive again."
In the end it became my favourite painting from the recent series and is like all favourites a talisman of possibilities.
Improvisation,- coming from the Latin "not foreseen" is the corner stone of both my practice and theory as a painter. And within that, pouring paint is an extraordinarly potent way to invite 'the not foreseen' into the evolution of a painting.
I am passionate about it as a technique with a potential to re- enlivens pictorial language, and in fact the image above is not me but a young student pouring thinned oil paint onto one of my paintings during a weeks work experience in the studio.
There is of course a history of poured paint as a technique within the last century with artists like Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and more recently Trevor Bell and Keith Tyson.
There is some fascinating film footage of Pollock at work with his voice explaining his approach on youtube
Back in 2008 the gallery that represents me in the UK, Four Square Fine Arts commissioned the filmmakers Last Bus to make a short interview led documentary that was shot in the studio and shows pouring of paint, I've added the trailer below and you can see the complete film on the Four Square website.
(download)
I'm a painter whose passionate about what paint does. Above are a couple of examples from my most recent solo show, Chronocromie: The Colour of Time which was held at the Air Gallery in London in October.
I suppose the easiest way to really introduce my self is to reproduce an interview I had to mark the exhibition with Mark Halliley the director of BBC 1's Modern Masters Matisse.
An interview by Mark Halliley, director of BBC 1's Modern Masters – Matisse, with written responses by the artist Marco Crivello
What was the impulse behind this new series - a concept or an experience? If an experience, was it something that happened inside or outside the studio?
The impulse to begin a work remains the same as it has done for the last twenty years — improvisation. As an approach to exploring painting it appears inexhaustible, and has become the pole star of my practice. Equally, but more prosaically, the paintings are a response to the prospect of a solo show, which focuses the mind wonderfully, with a date in the diary and a space to be filled!
CHRONOCHROMIE – The Colour of Time: how would you describe the content or message of these paintings, taking the series as a single group?
I think it's worth remembering that what enters as content is always more than conscious intent, so I would be reticent to saddle them with any overt message, but I do feel this group is distinguished from the Possible Worlds show two years ago by a distinct shift in emphasis. This became evident early on, when the 'story' or central thread, clearly became about the interplay and visibility of improvised processes; Time blending with colour – the colour of time. Looking back over the last ten years it is interesting to see how these processes, have increasingly shaped the finished surface and particularly how the traces left by liquid flow have generated atmospheres in the landscapes very much in the romantic tradition of 'Sturm und Drang'; but all the while they have equally been acquiring their own narrative life. It is the fluid dynamic that moves water, or magma, that shapes the land, and moves the weather around us, that increasingly interests me and it is an interest linked to areas of science that propose correspondences between macrocosm and microcosm, such as physicist David Bohm's Implicate Order, as well as resonances found in older cosmologies, like the Chinese Tao, where an inter-relatedness of phenomena, patterned according to principles of flow are highlighted, for example in the principle of Li.
How much of a liberation has it been to paint on circular surfaces rather than in the square or rectangular formats you have generally favoured till now?
As a 'mid career' painter - shorthand for middle aged - I'm keenly aware of the dangers of painting myself into a corner - those little 'triumphs' in the studio inevitably involve, more or less rapidly, into repetition and mannerism - the adage New wheels make new ruts comes to mind! The circle comes with a weight of cultural associations, and whilst some of these undoubtedly will inform the paintings, the choice to work within a circle, was primarily a practical decision, coming at time when I felt that certain formal aspects of what I was doing had run their course. The format suggests an arena in which to act, rather than a space to reproduce, and interestingly the way poured paint moves around the space has opened up new compositional paths, encouraging shifts in scale and variations in paint handling.
What is the role of chance in these works - and what is the role of conscious design?
For me, improvisation aligns intention and chance, or perhaps more accurately surrender, braiding them into a dynamic flowing dialogue. To follow the tail of an intuited 'what if', allows the unexpected to arise, is profoundly liberating, and I believe draws us closer to the purity and spontaneity of childlike meaningful play.
How does each painting begin?
The beauty of improvisation is that you just begin.
How have you decided when each one is "finished"?
I am glad you put finished in parenthesis – Picasso spoke of works never being finished but abandoned! The dialogue that many artists speak of is that before long the painting dictates what it needs, as though there was an inherent trajectory, or unfolding logic. The question then is about how far you can go with this, before eventually, I would say, painting yourself out of the picture. A finished piece always has for me a certain quality of looking forward, evoking possibilities, as well as that element of surprise, that makes me ask, where did that come from?! Equally the end of a painting involves long periods of just looking, scanning for a sense of rightness, a compact organic integration. And then from there, in a very real sense, it is the viewer who completes the work.
As you worked on these paintings, were you conscious of parallels between the painting process and the evolutionary process, at a global level?
Yes, it's undoubtedly a way of working that lends itself to comparisons with geological processes, and I think this was intriguingly captured in a short time-lapse film Voyaging Out -on my website, that shows the unfolding of a painting in 23 stages. Seeing that blended evolution gave me a real interest in how our planet might appear through time-lapse, over thousands, even millions of years, as one continuous extraordinary fluid movement, where even the most stable matter flows.
The series often seems to evoke satellite photos of the earth from space, where our planet hangs beautiful but fragile- as in World View. Was that your intention, or did it just happen?
Both and neither! I'm certainly interested in how new 'landscapes', revealed by satellite, telescope or microscope, can reshape our sense of 'being - in -the- world', but in specific reference to a piece like Worldview, yes, at some point it suggested satellite imagery, but I never felt tied to it being a representation in a literal sense, and had an action, like pouring paint moved it in a completely different direction, then that's where I would have gone.
Other images in the series, like Natural History, evoke the implicit violence at the heart of creation, and lurking beneath the earth's surface. Are such paintings also warnings about our own potential violence and inhumanity?
I think your question raises interesting questions about what informs the language we use to describe our relationship to nature. The evolutionary drive, to subjugate and harness those forces that threaten to make life so tenuous and uncertain, has crystallised, particularly in western history, into a dysfunctional sort of dualism that sets us apart from nature, which in turn shapes notions, like the sublime, as articulating human experiences in the face of an overpowering, threatening universe. I find myself more drawn to a viewpoint and aesthetic that sees us not distinct from nature, but a microcosm enfolded within it, which these improvised paintings, attempt to celebrate. But I think it is equally possible that the artist's meaning is not the only meaning and the emotional response and insight of the viewer may well be quite different.
Even if only in a suggestive sense, these images are strongly figurative. How important is it for you to keep that literal link with the world as you perceive it?
I'm fascinated by what paint does, the juxtaposition of formal elements; thick impasto brush marks, set against pools of thinned colour, the buttery slab from a palette knife, spattered by the blast from an aerosol. In that sense the notation of painting is essentially abstract. Importantly for the viewer does calling it abstract or figurative significantly alter their response? If so why? That's a much more interesting line of enquiry to me.
What is it about painting that you feel is suited to taking on the issues and themes you are engaging with here?
Well, all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways, and to be a painter today is to employ a language that has, in many ways, been sidelined by the 'hotter' media, photography, film and video, in what we increasingly call the information age. But what continues to fascinate me about painting and mark making, is it's unmediated quality; Quite simply there is you, the paint and the surface, creating a feedback loop of incredible immediacy, little changed since prehistory and I think particularly suited to improvisation. The possibility that something of this immediacy can resonate in the viewer, is I think one reason for painting's continuing relevance.
What is art for now?
Through Four Square Fine Arts' educational program, I have found myself working with people of all ages. I am convinced by these experiences, that an ability to express from our innate creativity, is part of what defines being human. Art can offer, particularly through practical engagement, a unique way of encountering the world; orientating, anchoring and transforming experience. This in turn can enlarge our perspectives - both interior and exterior, helping us to perceive or think differently about what it means to be alive.
You can see more examples of my work at www.marcocrivello.co.uk
