When I meet people who
have never seen my paintings I’m often asked to describe them;
to pigeon hole them with an acceptable "-ism". Merely
to say they are realistic is too vague as under the banner of ?realism?
come the various sub categories of Photo Realism, Hyper Realism,
Magic Realism and Surrealism. I wouldn’t describe my paintings
as Photo Realist because they don’t in any way attempt to
copy the quality of a photograph; nor are they Hyper Realistic because
I can make sweeping generalisations in a brush stroke; they’re
no where near Magic Realism and any Surrealistic mood is more in
the eye of the beholder. So where do I pigeon hole my paintings?
Do I call them Realistic, Naturalistic or Idealistic? Yes and No.
The difference between the words Realism & Naturalism is subtle
but worth noting: Realism in art and literature shows life as it
is; factually, in a true way, omitting nothing that is ugly or painful
- idealising nothing. Realism faces the facts with a disregard of
sentiment and convention. A person said to be a "realist"
is one who believes himself to be without illusions and is not stirred
by sentiment. The opposite of realism is Idealism. An "idealist"
employs the imagination to portray perfection - an idea - even if
this means being untrue to the facts. Naturalism is an adherence
to nature; in art this means painting things in a way true to nature
- but not necessarily realistically. For example, a tree painted
by Monet could be rendered in three brush strokes, but when viewed
from a distance it fits in with all the other brush marks so that
one understands that one is looking at a tree, because from a distance
that is how a tree appears naturally. A realist, such as Holman
Hunt, would have painted every leaf on the tree because trees have
leaves - a factual reality. The opposite of naturalism, and also
realism, is abstraction because abstract art does not represent
objects, scenes etc., in an obvious way, but abstracts, and isolates
features of reality.
Why is 99.9% of painting confined to the arbitrarily imposed forms
of squares and rectangles? Wouldn't it be more realistic if ones
vision - ones idea - became the boundary of the painting? A boundary
decided not just by observation and the logical rules of perspective
but by feeling; if something feels big or small, tall or narrow,
for example, then make it big or small, tall and narrow. Emphasising
how something really feels adds extra dimension to the notion of
‘realism’ making it Supra-Realism. Strict adherence
to the rules of perspective can result in falsehood; perspective
was devised to understand the natural world from a fixed view point
so that it could be reinvented and reproduced realistically.
I have always been interested in multi view point perspective but
it was only when I left the UK that I really started to work on
irregular shapes canvases because I wanted to use more than one
view point in order to give a better representation of my surroundings.
To do this I had to stretch and distort the perspective which was
devised to show space from one single view point. For me this fixed
view point is restrictive because the perception of our environment
depends upon our memory joining together many different views, rather
like a visual puzzle. The multiple view points and the consequent
distortion in perspective have forced me to reject the unnatural
boundaries imposed by the more conventional squares and rectangles
and have given me the freedom to describe my thoughts and feelings
about my surroundings more accurately. These shapes are not determined
by any arbitrary breaking up of the rectangle but by a need to bring
together essential elements within the composition, by rejecting
some and emphasising other forms needed to maintain the tension
which otherwise would be lost in the those areas dictated by the
corners. However, in order to retain a certain logic and continuity
of vision, I adhere to the rules of perspective but only to the
point at which these rules begin to obstruct my feeling for space.
Intuition is frequently more reliable than intellect and so it is
from here onwards that space is felt; one can learn the rules but
not the poetry. The irregular shapes enhance the pictorial and emotional
impact on the viewer whilst the multiple view points and multiple
eye levels work in harmony to recreate the sensations first experienced
when standing in front of the original motif.
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independent
dist 
georgian
quarter 
city
central 
docklands
artists
