Making Painting, Helen Frankenthaler and Turner at Turner Contemporary

The Turner Contemporary gallery has a new exhibition called Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and J.M.W. Turner.  Gallery website here
Ruth and I went to the opening night last Friday and it was good to see the gallery full of people.

The exhibition has a good selection of Turner's paintings which I enjoyed looking at closely. Most of the paintings don't have a barrier infront of them, which is great for looking close up, and as there are some small works you can really see the details.



The Evening Star Image from John Lewis website

There are quite a few works that I'll be going back to look at again including The Evening Star which is a deceptively simple painting with a wide expanse of sea, sand and sky. On the beach a boy with a shrimping net and a dog and in the sky a single star. The star is a pale point of light, not easily seen in the print, but a reflection is also on the sea.
The painting is one of Turner's atmospheric works where the effects of light and subtle changes in colour are all explored. A lovely painting and worth studying.


In Boats off Deal just a few brush strokes indicate the boats sailing in a  choppy sea, with the beach in the background. The small painting has the same power of the elements that Turner seemed to love with atmospheric lighting.  I also enjoy seeing his pictures of local Kent scenes. Maybe the gallery will show all the Margate and Kent pictures they can find one day.

There are restrictions on copyright for Turners little graphite drawing of Coniston Fells 1799 so I can't find an image to show here. But I was struck by the sweeps of grey clouds the subtle tones in the landscape and a vertical object like a piece of a broken wooden structure.  I think I will go back to sketch that drawing in more detail.

I don't remember seeing any of Helen Frankenthaler's paintings before. This is her first major exhibition since her exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1969. I am really pleased that the gallery has been showing work by woman artists as most exhibitions still go to male artists.
Helen Frankenthaler was married to Robert Motherwell who is much more well known as is often the case with artists partnerships.

In this exhibition there are early works by her including Hotel Cro-Magnum 1958 which is a large vibrant painting, the name referencing the hotel that she and Robert Motherwell stayed in during a visit to Europe. The paint floods the canvas, Helen Frankenthaler painted with the canvas on the ground, the composition has suggestions of place and form and spontaneity.

Hotel Cro-Magnum image from Art Fund website

In the 1960's She painted Saturn with striking colours of yellow gold, turquoise and ultramarine. There is something of the night sky about the work and of the sun or yellow earth. A lovely quality of energy about the painting too.

Saturn image from BBcCwebsite

In 1992 her painting Overture is filled with green brushstrokes a swirl of green and yellow light and touches of pink and white a little like blossom. A darker passage of colour sits in the foreground. The painting has qualities of landscape that I really respond to.

Overture, image from Art Fund website

After looking at the paintings I was struck by how spontaneous they were, the difficulty in putting down in one move all that you want to convey in a work is very difficult I know. So these paintings impressed me with this singular translated vision and I wondered how many times she got the paintings just right.

So I was pleased to find this little quote from Frankenthaler about just this subject.


"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." In Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1975, p. 85)

I recommend the exhibition which is running till
 May 11th 2014.

Turner and Constable Sketching from Nature exhibition.

John Constable, The Sea near Brighton, 1826, Oil on paper laid on card, support: 175 x 238 mm, © Tate, London 2013

It's the last few days of the exhibition Turner and Constable Sketching from Nature at the Turner Contemporary gallery here in Margate.

View of the Turner Contemporay Gallery and Droit House from the Harbour.

J.M.W. Turner, The Thames near Walton Bridges, 1805 from Art Fund website

I have managed to go several times and hopefully one more time before it closes on the 5th January. Info from the gallery here

I must admit when I first heard the title of the exhibition I thought there might be some more sketch book sketches. But as a sketch was anything up to the point of a studio finnished painting in their days,the title holds.

 John Constable, The Grove, Hampstead, c. 1821-2 from Art Fund website

Along side paintings by Turner and Constable their are many works by their contemporaries including John Sell Cotman, John Croome and Francis Danby, which are good to see.


 Following various peoples ideas that a sketch is a better way to really recall a scene than a photograph, and as I couldn't take photos in the gallery I made some very quick line sketches to remind myself of the pictures that I really liked.
And I did find that I could recall the paintings and sketches quite easily from the little marks and comments.


I found myself inspired to do a few more sketches of the sky and clouds as well as studying the sea more closely.

The exhibition is well worth seeing if you have time over the next few days.

 John Croome, Yarmouth Harbour, Evening, c. 1817caption  from Art Fund website.

Artists Books talks part 2

The second talk I went to as part of Pushing Print was The Art of the Book by  Ciara Healey.

Ciara and I recognised each other from a book event but couldn't place which one. Ciara had a selection of artists books for us to look at as well. I was very much enjoying getting to handle books at these talks.

As a type of art object, artists books need to be seen and handled to really appreciate their construction as well as design and content.
Book arts bypass the constraints of the gallery Ciara said and have and are a valuable vehicle for the dissemination of ideas, including the radical and revolutionary. She gave a brief overview of the artist book, from Dada and Duchamp to Fluxus, Yoko Ono, Ed Ruscha and Sol De Witt. One of the books Ciara mentioned, Yoko Ono's Grapefruit has been republished link here

Ciara then introduced to some contemporary book artists some of whom I followed up, including Barbara Barnes Allen who produces large concertina books that can fill a gallery. Her work uses found objects from where ever she is combined on collaged pages. the everyday is the subject.

Image from Fiber Artist Journey 

Barbara writes on the book arts website  
"My closing thought on these books I borrow from Baudelaire. I paraphrase, but he essentially said that the job of the artist is to distill the ephemeral to the eternal. And so, one of the ways we can demonstrate this concept is by using the most ordinary of things around us to produce art that is of this time and only this time. It can be difficult creating art from ordinary things, but to me, within that concept lays the challenge and the answer. Our everyday defines us, the time we live in and what we observe along the way."

Another book artist Ciara spoke about was Steve Mcpherson   website here
whose works have been installations. In Drift ll  he was inspired by the sea Ciara said, collecting books that were to do with the bottom of the sea and layering them first over the gallery floor. He then layered books to do with the inside of the sea, including fish and sea creatures and finally the top layer was composed of books that dealt with the surface of the sea including ships.
Visitors to the gallery could take off their shoes and walk across the surface of the sea.

Ciara's talk was really inspiring and gave me a lot of food for thought on ways to work with books. Her enthusiasm for artists books of all forms was catching and I've found myself  following up more artists from her talk  If you want to know a bit more about Ciara and her work her own website is  here

Beach Cross racing on Margate main sands.

There are two Beach Cross racing competitions held in Margate each year which draw crowds to watch the quad and motorbikes. The second competition was last weekend and you could hear the roar of the bikes from our house.

I enjoy watching the races, the bikes churning up the sand, (this time because of the wind, quite a lot of sand was blowing across to the spectators) and the jumps they make from the sandunes. As the bikes go round the course you get views of bikes at various stages of the race.

Bikes can get stuck in the sand and you can see how much work it must take to physically race on the beach.  It is an international event and riders do come from Europe to take part.
I couldn't find a programme at this event so can't identify the riders unfortunately.

At the pit stop bikes and bikers make a colourful scene and around the beach there are various stands and stalls.
 The website for the Beach Cross event is here