Post 5 - Colour and Emotion

Thinking about Colour and emotion

I have been looking at more Picasso paintings from the 1930’s since my return from Sydney and remembering an exhibition at the Tate Modern.

TATE MODERN EXHIBITION

THE EY EXHIBITIONPICASSO 1932 – LOVE, FAME, TRAGEDY

8 MARCH – 9 SEPTEMBER 2018

I saw this a few years ago where he combined the figure and ground in a very compressed way and also used warm and cool colours to depict his relationship with Marie-Terese Walter.1

I especially like the way he edges the picture with colour blocks and the surface looks almost pushed into with his hands over the brushwork, creating a tactile sensation reminding us of flesh. (fig.1)

fig. 1

Picasso

Sleeping nude with Blonde hair

I read this book below after attending a lecture on the subject. The book ‘Drawn to Nature, Gibert White and the Artists’ by Simon Martin (fig 2), depicted the works of the many artists who have been inspired by the early English Naturalist. White’s observation of nature is relevant when I think about observational sketching I do before my painting takes place in the studio.

I have also been reading The Waves by Virginia Woolf, (fig 4), her writing at this time was exploring a stream of consciousness way of viewing time and nature as well as the intertwined relationships people have with each other and places.

fig 2

This was a book by the author, Simon Martin who also worked at Pallant House Gallery Guildford, There was also exhibition about artists depicting or influenced by White and later Virginia Woolf was on. 3

The connection with the landscape of Sussex where I have lived is very helpful in understanding Woolf’s writings and Gilbert Whites view of nature and the artists depictions of his writings.

fig 4

Footnotes

1 Marie-Thérèse Walter (13 July 1909 – 20 October 1977) was a French model and lover of Pablo Picasso from 1927 to about 1935 and the mother of their daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso.

2 https://pallant.org.uk/whats-on/drawn-to-nature-gilbert-white-artists/#:~:text=Gilbert%20White%20(1720%20%E2%80%93%201793),Eric%20Ravilious%20and%20John%20Nash.

3 https://pallant.org.uk/whats-on/virginia-woolf-an-exhibition-inspired-by-her-writings/

Post 2 - Wellington visit and consideration of Landscape tradition in Aotearoa

Reflecting on the seminar and the exhibitions I have seen in the last 3 weeks

Wellington - visit to Te Papa to see the exhibition

Hiahia Whenua

Landscape and desire

This exhibition explores the different ways that artists in Aotearoa have expressed their relationship to the land - to the places we live in.

For Māori whenua is a concept that connects land to whakapapa (ancestral ties), providing a sense of belonging through time. The Western tradition of landscape painting offers an aesthetic response - a view of the land represented and reimagined by the artist.

The exhibition invites us to “Discover land as an accumulation, ‘a stretch of earth overlaid with memory, expectation, and thought’- land as connection and desire.”1

Fig 1 and 2 were interesting in terms of scale and view point for me.

fig 1

Emily Karaka (1952-)

Nga Tapuwae o Mataoho 2020

fig 2

Shane Cotton

photograph

1997

Hiahia - meaning to want or desire - depicts a mountain, both nearby and receding, photographed from the window of a moving car.

I am fomulating my ideas around how I perceive landscape and my sense of belonging, and how this is relevant to the new body of work I intend to finish for the end of year.

Landscape painting may be a theme of many of the paintings, as I try and negotiate my own relationship to this tradition.

footnotes

1 Author Scott Russell Saunders, 1998