{"id":28471,"date":"2025-05-26T21:39:27","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T20:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/?p=28471"},"modified":"2025-05-28T02:09:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T01:09:49","slug":"from-the-archive-what-the-wall-remembers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/from-the-archive-what-the-wall-remembers\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Archive: What the Wall Remembers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often, I go rooting through the old spreadsheets. Quiet archaeology. To see who bought what, when, and whether it\u2019s time to reconnect. I like keeping a feel for it – for the rhythm of a collector\u2019s eye over time. What they were drawn to, what they paired and grouped together, what they circled back for. And then I sit with the works that might align well beside what they already have. Not to repeat – to deepen the conversation in their collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

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And There will Your Heart be Also by Andrews Iain<\/p><\/div>\n

I was doing a little of that yesterday. Reaching out to a few old collectors, tracing the arc of their tastes. Looking back a few years, it\u2019s always hard to tell, isn\u2019t it – whether something felt beautiful because of the spirit of the time, or because it really holds something timeless. But there were definite threads. Certain visual rhythms that kept showing up. A kind of quiet eloquence. I\u2019ll try to describe what I saw.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I was noticing was a chalky intensity. Not in colour exactly, but in finish. The surface held a softness – like limed walls, or that Tadelakt texture you sometimes see in Morocco. Softly burnished, almost skin-like. Like quiet light.<\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be matte. Sometimes there\u2019s the faintest sheen, but the softness is still there. It\u2019s less about surface, more about pigment. How it settles. How it carries light. It\u2019s a texture you feel more than see. That kind of quiet seduction – a whisper with weight.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not all pale or pastel. Some of the colours are incredibly vibrant. That powdery quality doesn\u2019t mean desaturated – it\u2019s the powderiness of pure pigment. Like those triangular piles of colour in Indian markets. Dense, saturated, luminous. It\u2019s about concentration. These are colours with punch – not watered down, but finely tuned.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Goodbye Sweetheart by Andrews Iain<\/p><\/div>\n

And it\u2019s a certain kind of colour, too. The kind that\u2019s been mixed – not chosen. These aren\u2019t shop-bought pigments. They\u2019re made. I did a painting course recently where the teacher limited our palette to just two colours and white. That was it. An exercise in discipline: looking, mixing, trying again. You realise how much presence it takes to get a colour right. Not just skill – but patience. Attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

What happens is, an artist ends up with something that\u2019s uniquely their own. Yes, you can buy beautiful paints – and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. But there\u2019s a different quality when the colour has been made, mixed – when the artist has looked, adjusted, looked again. It becomes embodied. Carries something else. As in nature – those subtle, unnameable shades you can only try to replicate faithfully from real looking.<\/span><\/p>\n

And you can feel it, in the work – when the colour\u2019s been earned like that. Not picked. Made.<\/span><\/p>\n

The colours I kept seeing were\u2026 specific. Pure, but not flat. More like\u2026 distilled. An intense sort of mauve maybe. A verdant olive green. Something luminous that wasn\u2019t just about light, but about presence. Not quite magic – magic sounds rehearsed – a quiet uniqueness. A subtle purity that holds.<\/span><\/p>\n

It reminded me of teaching art – those moments when students are so immersed in the process they forget to clean their brushes. Not from laziness (necessairly), but absorption. And sometimes, yes, something interesting happens – a happy accident. But the colours I was seeing and reflecting on yesterday didn\u2019t come from that. They came from the opposite. From care. From a kind of gaze where every brush is cleaned with intention, where the palette is respected, where the colour isn\u2019t accidental. It\u2019s chosen, adjusted, layered. Earned.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I noticed that across all th0se pieces – the ones I was looking at yesterday. A consistent quality. As if they\u2019d all been made from that kind of gaze.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a kind of luminescence running through them. And these little jolts of colour – these small, vibrant moments. Whether still life or landscape, there was a sense of being somewhere richly alive. Like Gauguin\u2019s tropical fruit, but contemporary – less romanticised, more structurally clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another thing I noticed: containment. Not in a naive or heavy-handed way, but in how the elements held their own space. Defined. Deliberate. Some works leaning towards pattern; others a conscious compositional edge. As if every part of the piece knew where it belonged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost all of the works – though not quite all – were without people. I was only looking at five or six collectors\u2019 selections though, so it\u2019s not a sweeping statement. But still – a pattern.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Stargazing by William Face<\/p><\/div>\n

I love portraiture – and personally love painting people. There\u2019s something magnetic about the human form. But when it comes to contemporary art in the home\u2026 acquiring portraiture – that\u2019s for a separate post. It can be complicated.<\/span><\/p>\n

In these collections, the figure was either absent or implied. A gesture. A trace. A presence suggested rather than stated. Nothing overt. Nothing identifiable. Atmosphere, held.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the pieces had a kind of sensory lift. Not tropical – that\u2019s been overused into clich\u00e9. Not exotic either – that one\u2019s worse. But something. A certain kind of heightened perception. \u201cSpiciness\u201d isn\u2019t quite right either..
\n<\/span>I might need to circle back and find the word.<\/p>\n

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Silver Suburbia by Goldsmith Nina<\/p><\/div>\n

They were landscapes, still lives, and quiet scenes – with that feeling you get when you arrive somewhere beautiful for the first time. That gentle jolt to the senses. <\/span><\/p>\n

Like stepping off a plane into heat, or walking into a fruit market you didn\u2019t know you were looking for. Or even just setting things down on a kitchen table and noticing – \u00a0in that second – that the light is perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Confetti by Nicola Wiltshire<\/p><\/div>\n

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Rockpools by LaVette Colette<\/p><\/div>\n

They had that quality. Rich with natural beauty. Colour that was intense, sometimes luminescent. Or pearlescent. Something alive in the pigment.<\/span><\/p>\n

And really – why wouldn\u2019t you want that energy in your home? Who wouldn\u2019t want to live alongside that kind of scene? A quiet, life-affirming beauty. Those moments that stop you for just a breath – God, that\u2019s beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the moment itself that\u2019s been caught. It\u2019s been heightened. Tuned. An artist has seen it – or imagined it – and then shaped it with care. Through their own vision, their hands, their choices. The materiality, the colour mixing, the composition. It all comes together like\u2026 an offering.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not \u201ccraft\u201d in the way the word\u2019s sometimes used to diminish – but in the truer sense: ritual. Reverence. Attention. <\/span>That\u2019s what I was seeing across those works.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Australian pink lake by Davidson Yasmin<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lemons and Chrysanthemums by \u00a0Rosemary Lewis<\/p><\/div>\n

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Silver Suburbia by Goldsmith Nina<\/p><\/div>\n

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I\u2019ve been looking through the current collection – of paintings, sculptures, drawings – and pulled together a selection of artists. Some are the same artists I saw in those collectors\u2019 histories. Others are new. All of them share something of the same atmosphere I was describing.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re all different, of course. But there\u2019s a thread. Intention. Beauty. Presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

View selected works<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often, I go rooting through the old spreadsheets. Quiet archaeology. To see who bought what, when, and whether it\u2019s time to reconnect. I like keeping a feel for it – for the rhythm of a collector\u2019s eye over time. What they were drawn to, what they paired and grouped together, what they circled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28472,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471\/revisions\/28472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newbloodart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}