Rose Arbuthnott

My practice of painting still life panels demands I reassess the role of modernism in today’s painting

And the place in the history of British painting. Background in abstract expressionism the second layer of modernism which has magnetised so many artists. But appears now often quite flimsy, eg Helen Frankenthaler. The politics of the time elevated this large scale for painting in the 50s and 60s. the scale dwarfed small art, hugely so in Britain. this scale pampered to a few artists,  fame became something dreamed about, the dislocation from the land in the US after the persecution of the native Americans meant an existential background for new painting, actually Pollock used Navajo woven rugs as inspiration which in fact was a reconnection to a past they knew not of. 

While the St Ives school in the uk , were deeply bedded in the landscape, Britain was often loved for its ‘green and pleasant land’. Their colour was the land and the sea. The paintings are expanding this colour. colour that belongs to the uk, northern Europe, the grandiosity of the abstract expressionists, some kind of minutiae where colour is the index, the subject is only pretend yet gives me a connection to still life painters such as Morandi and Winifred Nicholson. I have many failures and some dreadful car crashes, painting is under rehearsed mostly, and I would like to write about this failure. 

There is a whole blood bank of colour histories I have pecked at. From Albers most considered theory to the cultures of clothing and interior design in the wider world, from India to west Africa and Morrocco to the Sahara. Combinations imbed. From beauty to meaning. For instance, turquoise and dark red, in Mongolia. Blue and black- the sea or water in the Dagara tribe in Bukino Faso. To the north, the shades of grey, the subtlety of light in the north. Which is almost oppositional to these examples of south of the equator. Totally differently, Islam in the south is full and subtle with colour, such as in Zanzibar. Women may be covered but not just in black and white. There maybe no representation but what the heck there is so much more expression than that in colour pattern in architecture. And ceramic. 

There is something I’m getting at here with the repetition of coloured shapes. Making the application of paint important, something Moroccan artists would understand better than a Brit. 

Temperature is also all important, a cool yellow, against a pink that produces a heat like a kiln. That is also bridging cool and hot. This is the mainstay of whats going for this kind of painting. It is an unsung hymn colours in unison treat each other, well or bad, hot or cold, but why is the subject still here??? Some people say it’s because I did it I’m the flotilla in this ocean, but I can’t be having that, that’s a despot. so, I go back to the beginning of time for me which is partly around cubism and early modernism where we go back to how things were made ocularly. The beginning of pixelation, the liberation of colour, the honesty of subject. Though I’m not so honest as Picasso. 

Why would I choose this sequence of paintings over the rest of my practice, is it the thing with painting,  the way it mystifies, the way it makes allowances, I try and stay close to the application of paint, so that it is always an origin story, and the ending is not present so much, is whimsical. it is partially a tight ship, and an ocean. 

Another artist who assimilates me is Craigie Aitcheson whom many a Bedlington terrior is called after, I paint in order to understand painting in all its manifestations. For this I have to leave behind the hype. and go nose first, max wade is the first painter I have bothered with in ages. Before him Per Kirkeby, Matisse but particularly his sculpture. Something about, Guston though he is too mighty, like all Americans , us Brits are dwarfed intellectually, but not without our own superior qualities too. Him in contrapuntal form with Rothko. Who invented painterly materiality, cosmophonics, the problem with subject is a whole seam in western art, think Dekooning.. its almost that each artist has to figure it out for themselves... why is this? 

I like hoe it is almost nothing, the low-grade subject humbles the painting. Giving me ‘an origin’ point to Paint against. To make something to different degrees each ‘to feel itself’. Th process is present, you realise that you have to do the building, as the viewer. The preview is the painting process. Which has been filmed; ceases drama; my world doesn’t need any more drama; it is too exhaustive.       

So modernism is a chapter, as the last movement I believed in, the post modernism I am still in research, and contemporary is a huge wave to get to grips with… Im not sure if it’s my job... that one. 

Bibliography

The loft generartion, edith  schloss, 2021

How painting happens, martin Gayford, 2024

After modern art, 1945-2017, David Hopkins, 2018

Investigating modern art, the open university, 1996