Inspired by a comment John Clark made recently about having an ambition “to make work that has the same lingering impact that some songs do or a good book..” we recently got into an interesting conversation at New Blood Art with our artists on this topic – about what makes art resonate in this way..
John went on to say: “I’m often struck by the fact that contemporary art is driven, very properly no doubt, by the intellectual and practical challenges of art, leaving love and the like to the songsters or writers. In this and other similar work I’m wondering if some of that territory might be reclaimed for painting.”
In response, Nicola Wiltshire shared that she creates paintings in layers so that, over time, new meanings and dialogues can be discovered, forged and rekindled: “my aim is to make paintings that are surreal and ambiguous, so they can be interpreted as uniquely as the viewer that reads the image. ‘Lithuanian Icon’ and ‘The Artist (Icon)’ are part of a body of work that research the transcendental purity of Christian Icon paintings. I tried to capture the lingering essence of the paintings I studied through shades of gold, blue and eyes that arouse our senses. As a painting, ‘Lithuanian Icon’ shimmers but also, I hope, she shimmers with a knowing curiosity not unlike the haloed figures on which she was based. “
Kathryn Lloyd’s sleeping drawings are also relevant to this idea, she says “they are portraits of people at their most vulnerable, but often most beautiful. This idea of the ‘lingering’ is connecting with sleeping, in its change of state, the idea of unravelling, supposed peace, but often riddled with difficulties.”
Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf commented that “The beauty of art is that is can express things words can not say, and is able to reach areas beyond intellectual thought. In any of my really successful pieces of work there are always many more facets to the finished piece than I might have initially intended or am even be aware of. They almost come alive, and begin to mean different things to different people, and I think the most important part of a piece of work is that it should stir something in the viewer, preferably something which they can’t even quite pinpoint themselves…”
A curator recently wrote of Joanne Hummel- Newell‘s work that “The free flowing eclectic world of Hummel-Newell is a journey through the scavenged, neglected and overlooked. Outdated bus tickets, kids drawings and shoppings lists are some of the everyday ephemera that meet scissors and random acts of chance in a magical mystery tour that wrestles clarification, creative destruction and a quirky seems of wit. Hummel-Newell plays out innovative acts of ordering and reactivating of the anonymous and ubiquitous things we meet and part company with on a daily basis. In doing new sensations ebb and flow, both in and outside the physical space that is the canvas, from shape to colour; form to pattern. Hummel-Newell combines a bold and vibrant sensitivity to raw ephemera in which to revisit our world. The instantaneous, forever changing and obsolete she tries to hold monetarily in a creative balancing act of heady immersion and unfolding delight.”
Peter Monkman said that “Interesting painting (like a great song or book) needs to be more than illustrative; it must be ambiguous and beguiling enough to point to something beyond the surface and grow in feeling and status to be bigger than the initial image or object.”
