Landscape Painting?

View From a Train Window

(now in private collection)

Oil paint on canvas

…the experience of the landscape viewed in shorthand, the trick is to imply with the minimum of effort…

Unfortunately the majority of landscape art fails miserably. However, ‘Lake Lucerne: the Bay of Uri from above Brunnen‘ circa 1844 (by Turner) is the ultimate painting of landscape and nature – it tells a massive story with very little content. This has been an important painting for me since the early 1970’s. I have always admired the New York Abstract Expressionists of the mid 20th century but when I first saw this painting by Turner…… my sock were blown off. It is without doubt a clever (maybe unfinished) conceptual landscape painting.

Landscapes that are seen at speed, blurred, undefined, with a static, pinpoint horizon are better than watching TV. In many respects transferring theses visual clues into (in my case) paint gives a prompt, a reminder of the general feel of the landscape… an estimate, a representation/illusion takes on more realness than the actual physical object, the object then becomes a metaphor for the created illusion. This in turn creates an additional reference for the object, an extra visual adjective eg. ‘The sky was very Turneresque.’ Turner’s illusion becomes a metaphor for the real thing, which vividly describes [in words] the actual sky. The concrete object cannot say everything about itself – it has a limited vocabulary and is unable to say what is required of it. It is on many levels mute.

Sid Vicious painting for sale – $75.00

“Whatever Happened to the Space Age” Original painting by Peter Bright. Media: Painting and Screen Print on canvas, signed and dated 2011.Size: 400mm x 400mm. Price includes shipping Continue reading ?
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Robert Rauschenberg

‘Walk Away or Jump’

The image of the man holding the fish was taken in Cuba in 1999. We were staying in a beach complex. The canteen that feed us all ran out of food. A handful of us hired a boat to try and catch some fish. The red snapper in the photograph was caught by me and was quickly converted into a meal. Ironically I am highly allergic to fish and could therefore not eat it.

Inspired by a cliff walk with one of Robert Rauschenberg’s assistants in 1979. During 1979 I was in a band called ‘The Urge’, who were discovered by an A&R man from Beggars Banquet Records, who saw us play at my degree show at Exeter College of Art. We ended up supporting ‘Bauhaus’, ‘Adam and the Ants’, ‘The Pack’ and many other Post Punk heroes. We were offered a record contract and the A&R man became our manager and Rauschenberg’s former assistant also became an important member of our team.

I lived near Exmouth and often walked across the beach and along the cliffs – this time I was accompanied by Rauschenberg’s assistant who had been staying with me. At the highest point he confessed his love for me, which was a bit of a shock and I replied ‘I’m sorry but I prefer women”. The implications of this encounter still roll around in my brain. ‘Walk Away or Jump’. This was possibly one of the major turning points in my life – what did I turn down? Fame, fortune?

What is Painting?

Contemporary artists have extended the boundaries of painting considerably to include;  collage, different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Juxtaposing images and materials, either as a collage, printing or painting is not simply a decorative process it is a complicated exercise.… Continue reading ?

What is Painting?

Contemporary artists have extended the boundaries of painting considerably to include;  collage, different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Juxtaposing images and materials, either as a collage, printing or painting is not simply a decorative process it is a complicated exercise. The mind always tries to create a narrative between images and materials. The juxtaposition of arbitrary marks, color, photographs etc. will always tease and trick the mind into rationalizing what it is trying to process and attempt to make physical world references – in other words make sense of what it is trying to analyze.

Since the proliferation of computers, painting could be argued to have migrated to the digital age (world). There is a massive community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, Gimp and others. Does this mean that new printing techniques have now become absorbed into painting methodologies and practices?

This meshing together of processes, unrelated imagery and the breaking down of barriers cannot be seen as a shortcut to intellectual credibility. The dedicated thought process that goes with the creative procedure should be one of intense reasoning. It is therefore unrealistic to expect the uneducated masses to use the computers prescriptive decision making to create ‘real art’. The birth of Photoshop has enabled everybody to create ‘non-intellectual’ versions of Rauschenberg (and Warhol) – this is not ART.

Allergy

“Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface. The application of the medium is commonly applied with a brush. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. These same criteria can be used to describe printing.”

Spaceage Gorilla original painting £47.08 ($70.00)

Original painting by Peter Bright . Media: Painting and Screen Print on canvas, signed and dated 2011. Size: 500mm x 400mm Painting  on deep box canvas. £47.08 ($70). Shipping Free. Continue reading ?
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Art Since Pop

There are some reference books that follow you and stay with you through out your life. ‘Art Since Pop‘ is such a book, published in 1975 (by Dolphin). This book simply sets out to do what it says in the title, explaining art movements such as Process Art, Land Art, Conceptual Art and Body Art, in a brief but concise way. None of the movements of fine art covered in this pocket sized book are dealt with in great depth but it provides an informed introduction to these different concepts and methodologies, reassessing its effectiveness and ability to move on and change. The beauty of this book is the fact that it was written closer to ‘as it was happening‘ and gives an optimistic appraisal of art movements that have since been sidelined or dismissed as mere Cul-de-sacs.

John A. Walker (b. 1938) is a British art critic and historian who has written over 15 books on modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on mass media. He has also written on design history methodology. Walker’s books include Art since Pop (1975), Design history and the history of design with Judy Attfield (1990), John Latham: The Incidental Person – His Art and Ideas (1994), Cultural Offensive: America’s Impact on British Art since 1945 (1998), Art & Outrage (1999), Supercollector: A Critique of Charles Saatchi with Rita Hatton (2000),Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain (2001), Art in the Age of Mass Media (3rd ed.: 2001), Art and Celebrity (2003) and Firefighters in Art and Media: A Pictorial History (2009).

Walker was a Reader in Art and Design History at Middlesex University near London until retiring in 1999. He was trained as a painter at Newcastle upon Tyne.

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