Ocean Park No.43, 1971, Oil on canvas, 93×81”, Collection of Gretchen and John Berggruen

In 1991 there was a major retrospective of Richard Diebenkorn’s work at the Whitechapel Gallery inLondon. It is one of my biggest regrets that I made only one visit, and I was resigned to the fact that such an opportunity would be unlikely to arise again. I was astonished therefore to find that a show dedicated to hisOceanParkpaintings was to be staged at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, in 2012.

But what drew me to the work of this Californian painter in the first place? The English landscape took on an enormous significance for me as I was growing up in Northamptonshire. Following overgrown pathways, disused railway lines and meandering roads, the beckoning horizon represented a sense of longing, to enter an unknown, always beyond, yet rooted in this place, ‘the county of squires and spires’, iron-ore and the poems of John Clare. It was the seventies, a romantic idealism was on the rise again, and painting was one of the few preoccupations that made sense. So I would cycle over the airfields at Grafton Underwood where Flying Fortresses once took off, to work in the woodlands, and attend art classes in the evening under our local hero, David Imms, a painter who was immersed in the changing cycles of nature and human presence in the landscape. There were many twists and turns, but one way or another the painting stuck and looking back I can see the significance of the place, and the way David Imms would attempt to capture the time of day or year through such directness and economy of means, which would become important later on in my discovery of Diebenkorn.

 David Imms, ‘Dorset Interior’, circa 1970, approx. 3’x4’, Oil on board

In the first year of my degree course at LeicesterI was exploring abstraction in a highly intuitive way influenced by Alan Davie, Graham Sutherland and Peter Lanyon, and there was usually a highly charged, and emotive suggestion of landscape. I then put myself under a tutor (Alan Welsford) renowned for his ruthless honesty, who suggested that I should develop ‘other muscles’. What ensued was an exploration of modes of working that were less concerned with expression and more about ‘how to proceed’. I ended up spending a great deal of time reading essays on Minimalism and Conceptualism, and writing a thesis about the use of the grid in the work of Mondrian, Barnett Newman and Agnes Martin. I remember dipping into an essay on Diebenkorn, but his significance wasn’t apparent to me at the time. I became interested in the place of idea, development, and methodology in art practice. Particularly significant was the discovery of Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, on the development of consciousness and Gyorgy Kepes’ collection of essays on architecture, cellular biology and sculpture called Structure in Art and Science. In the studio I remember the experience of an intense awareness in the act of drawing a line, making measurements, or constructing a grid, whether on canvas or in a timber floor relief. The grid for me was a process of pacing and marking out an extension in space and time, akin to the act of walking in the landscape – an exploration of self and place.

In the years after LeicesterI veered between restraint and lyricism in my work, with neither feeling wholly satisfactory. At the same time I was getting more involved in the ideas of G.I.Gurdjieff and the possibility of developing a higher critical faculty from which different modes of experience could be more clearly observed. It was at this point that I came across Gerald Nordland’s book on Diebenkorn and visited the Whitechapel retrospective. A door was opened and it dawned on me that here was an approach to painting that was both measured and free – on the one hand the geometric structure was alive, dynamic, felt, and on the other the freedom of brushwork and colour was intensified through containment. These paintings were rigorous in their abstraction and presence, while expressing a sublime feeling for landscape. They seemed to epitomise for me, painting in its purest sense, to the extent that they brought about a significant step forward in my own work. The geometry was important, and in the first paintings I would rule out a grid as a starting point, but this was something to work from or against. The key seemed to be in the extent to which one could dissolve or rework statements, placing more emphasis on the process of search rather than accepting something as final too soon.

 Ashley West, Painting with Sliding Blue, 2003, Alkyd, charcoal and pastel on canvas, 36×36”

In some sense edging away from Diebenkorn was as difficult as understanding his significance. My MA atWimbledonhelped with this to some degree. In recent years I have explored non-rectangular formats, a greater range of media and processes, and invited more playful activity in the pursuit of ‘surprise’. So there was a certain risk involved in spending five days re-engaging with theOceanParkseries at the Corcoran.

 Ocean Park No.29, 1970, Oil on canvas, 100×81”, Dallas Museum of Art

On entering the first room I was confronted by Ocean Park No.29, and was immediately struck by its monumentality, which wasn’t just to do with its size; it was more about its architecture and the audacity involved in reaching for such an unequivocal statement. You get the sense of a real workman, a builder, moving these weighty components around, balancing them, fixing them in place. Up close you see how quick and muscular the brushwork is. He doesn’t have time or inclination for any unnecessary tidying up as his eye is on the bigger picture. One of the most noticeable characteristics is the evidence of his process – the way the composition has been vigorously searched for, built up, changed and fine tuned. This is visible through the traces left behind (though this is more evident in other paintings). These reveal the history of the painting’s development, and have a fascination of their own, perhaps because they are reminiscent of the signs of transition we experience in the world around us (we know that Diebenkorn was fascinated by surface variations in the landscape, seen from a raised viewpoint). It was however, the underlying process of change through which he moved toward resolution that interested him most. The marks and traces follow on in the wake of his decisions – the movement of eye and hand. He avoids the temptation to settle for something purely on the basis of the incidental, or the attraction of one part or another – on the contrary, these must serve the statement as a whole. But how exactly do we experience this sense of wholeness?

Ocean Park No.29 seems to be full of ambiguities. The yellow on the left is like a shaft, thrown down to earth, reading as positive against the space of the blue, yet when this yellow is viewed as a light filled space, the blue tends towards a wall-like surface. The central grey beam and the light blue vertical below it read as a post and lintel, supported by the complementary pair of red and green horizontals, yet just how solid are they? The greenish-blue and violet-blue above create a near square, suggesting something very stable and frontal, yet the diagonal can read as an axis or fold about which the blues flip. It looks like a piece that is proposing an idea about unity and balance, but do we actually get a sense of final resolution? Standing in front of it, the eye constantly moves from this to that, and the mind flits from one association to another. The effort to take in the whole image at a glance seems almost to force or reduce it. It is as if what he leads us to, is in fact a carefully proposed question about the nature of things. What happens if one looks at the yellow and blue as (curiously), not being separate? Or, put another way, can one entertain the idea of a continuation across this division, because of, rather than in spite of the separation? One thinks here, not only about the relationship between zones in the landscape, but also the division of cells and tissues in the body, and the transference of forces in architecture. As with the nuances, it is less about how these parts appear as things in themselves (forms) and more about what they do or how they function through relationship. Diebenkorn spoke about the difficulty in overcoming inertia and his hope “that [he] can get things into that relationship where some kind of continuity materialises.”(1) This would seem to connect with ancient systems of thought such as Taoism which propose the existence of an ineffable unifying force that passes through and connects all forms. In this light the composition could be seen as a propitious alignment or configuration of forms that facilitates contemplation of the nature of things – a unity through diversity (or multiplicity), not instead of it. Could it also be said that final resolution is not given in an ‘open work’ such as this (in the sense that Umberto Eco used this term) because this can only take place on some other level, through the experience of the viewer? For all mystical traditions and even from the perspective of advanced scientific thought, this unifying force is elusive, although there is an intimation that the clue may be contained in the experience, paradoxically, of a stillness behind the movement.

 Ocean Park No.27, 1970, Oil on canvas, 100×80”, Brooklyn Museum

In Ocean Park No. 27, whose panels of luminous colour are more overtly separated by a strong framework, there is an architectural quality even more apparent than in Ocean Park No.29. Particularly intriguing are the inner structure and variegations of the yellow area, which show the searching necessary within a given component to find a sense of rightness. It is as if he is struggling for something that initially is beyond his grasp or even his comprehension. Paintings like this call to mind Euan Uglow’s paintings of the figure, in the use of prismatic colour and mosaic-like construction. Like Diebenkorn, Uglow has been described by some as over geometric or lacking in emotion, but to my mind there is a higher level of discipline and criticality exhibited by both which makes for a more refined emotion – a true feeling, which isn’t so much about personal expression as objective beauty, in the sense that Agnes Martin spoke of it. Perhaps this could be described as a classical sense of order and construction made all the more beguiling for the fact that it has been hard-won, fashioned out of human hands from the stuff of the earth, with its consequent wilfulness, variability, and rough hewn quality, in the same way that a piece of music for solo violin by Bach communicates not only the musical idea but also the materiality and tolerance of the human touch in relation to hair, strings, and wood, or the way a Gothic Cathedral configures light, space and proportion for the glory of God, out of stone, the tools of the mason, and more than a small dose of trial and error.

Ocean Park No.38, 1971, Oil on canvas, 100×81”, The Phillips Collection

This trial and error is demonstrated particularly well in Ocean Park No.38, where draft statements of both the V shape and the diagonal levering device (raising up the yellow) can be seen as ghost images, giving a strange suggestion of animated movement. The workings of such a painting are much more complex than most geometric abstraction in which the kind of line, surface or structure used is much more restricted. What paintings such as this helped me to understand is that one can employ the same multitude of techniques as those used by the figure painter or landscape painter, to push and cajole, bodge even, to make something very difficult and unlikely work. It is akin to putting up a make-shift shelter or getting the marooned Apollo 13 back to earth, using whatever is at hand – you test things to the limits and you have to be inventive. So such a painting needs tweaks, wedges, ties and so on, like the small red triangle which perhaps stops the V from slipping off the yellow, while giving a lateral movement to the blue, which might otherwise recede and float off, or the white margin on the lower left edge needing to ‘come in a bit’. Such things are most clearly known through the act of painting itself – physical engagement in partnership with critical observation.

Another aspect of this painting that interests me is that despite its airy expansiveness (akin to an outer landscape), its containment within the limits of the rectangle suggests an enclosed inner world – a place ‘mirroring the self’, where an orientation takes place, predominantly between higher and lower realms. I see this as similar to the way that narratives of a spiritual or alchemical nature are played out in some of the earliest cosmological diagrams from Rajasthan, or in Icon painting, Persian miniatures and early Italian painting, with their representations of the drama between heaven and earth, the divine and the human. It is my feeling that paintings that operate on a purely formal, abstract level, are impoverished where wider connotations pertinent to the whole human being are denied. To draw a vertical line can be to draw attention quite naturally to one’s own verticality in relationship to the ground. Thinned out brushwork may remind one of one’s own breath, and a colour may suggest the nature of spirit or earth. Together, such things can constitute processes of transformation that have extraordinary emotional and spiritual significance for the artist who is sufficiently receptive. In front of this painting it takes time before the power of that V shape, in connection with everything else, is fully assimilated and felt; then things appear that one hadn’t noticed, like the L shaped motif formed by the blue, the pink triangle and the green rhombus which can be read as superimposed over the V and pointing in the opposite direction, upward. This is an example of what Robert Hughes called ‘slow art’, and such work has I think the power to transcend the times in which it is produced and connect with the art of any period that similarly aspires to revelation.

 Ocean Park No.54, 1972, Oil on canvas, 100×81”, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Ocean Park No.54 veers toward something more atmospheric. With its washed out feel, it appeals perhaps to my Northern European sensibility. The more time I spent with this painting the more it appeared to exude the melancholy of things passing, akin to a landscape in which a more worldly drama has taken place – an invasion, one of Turner’s storms at sea, or perhaps simply the passing of another day in the relentless onslaught of time. It calls to mind the elegiac music of Vaughan Williams or Arvo Part. The divisions are much lighter, in total contrast to say No.27, more like the seams of a loose and threadbare fabric. Subtle, neutral tones flood most of the canvas, washing across divisions or submerging them. Towards the top right of the painting there is some suggestion of things withstanding, holding together in a more solid way. Top left, thin bands of yellow and green suggest hope – a return of some kind, of light and life. It is astonishing, the degree to which this piece evokes such associations while operating resolutely within the terms of abstraction. It could be said that there is an unashamed romantic quality to this work, a feeling for the sublime, which is nevertheless grounded by that classical detachment by which things are seen and measured.

Standing in front of these paintings one is reminded of the importance of their specificity, and of their presence, or rather that of the painter, in so far as one can respond to this through one’s own presence. The Corcoran is like a classical basilica, well suited to these paintings. Ocean Park No. 43 appeared looking down from the first room through three doorways, where it was hung dead centre, like an altar piece. The painting seemed itself to suggest, in its tripartite structure, a doorway, or window. It seems to evoke the joy of early morning, a milky light pervading an external view. This suggestion of a distant landscape appears almost dissolved, as in Monet’s paintings of morning on theSeine, or is it the known world that is being parted to reveal a world that is to some degree unknown, transcendent? Such paintings captivate me more even than Rothko’s, perhaps because Diebenkorn opens a door to you as the observer. One is included in the journey, in a deeply human process, which is anchored in this reality, and never lost sight of as another world is hinted at.

Notes

1.Tom McGuire, Richard Diebenkorn, Video,Los AngelesCountyMuseum of Art and TVTV, 1997.

PROPOSAL for an exhibition in association with SOL-SPACE

           
Sol-Space is a collective of abstract painters. It was formed in 2012 by artists Ashley West and Stephen Buckeridge to showcases work that is dedicated to a deep and personal exploration into the painting process, the language of abstraction, and the search for meaning. Given the wide range of practices that are now prevalent it was felt that there was a need for a space with a more focused identity, which could act as a showcase for abstract work and a forum for sharing ideas central to its concerns. Work is promoted through the virtual space of the web-site and through periodic group and one person shows in a variety of physical spaces.

At present the collective includes 13 artists and the aim at is to keep the total number to below twenty. These artists have been selected for the exploratory nature of the work and for its integrity. The response of artists to the aims of Sol-Space since its inception has been extremely positive.

One of the central aims of Sol-Space is to re-visit the underlying aims and methods involved in making, showing, discussing and documenting the work. The first activity was a discussion (documented on the website) titled ‘The Question of Integrity’.

Sol-Space is now seeking a space for its inaugural exhibition. The primary aim is to enable its members to view each others work and discuss ideas related to their collaboration, involve interested parties such as other artists, writers, curators and educators, make documentation available, and also share the results of these activities with the wider public.

Website: www.sol-space.co.uk

Contacts: ashleywest53@hotmail.com, or stephenj.buckeridge@virgin.net

As part of the statement on the Sol-Space home page it is said that ‘the artist’s search for integrity, and the connection between inner perceptions and outer forms, which are of both individual and universal significance, lies at the heart of the gallery’s ethos’. What does integrity mean to each of us, in relation to our practice?

For myself, initially, when I start to think about it, I go blank or it’s as if something baulks at it. Perhaps I’m used to coming across the idea of it only indirectly or unawares. I also assume, on some level, that I know what it means. When I try to confront it, it suddenly flies away. But then it’s like that sometimes if I think I have a good idea for a painting. I may have even mentioned it to someone, but then sense afterwards that something was lost in that process. There was something of a lie there – it wasn’t quite true. Where was integrity at that moment? If I begin a new piece of work with an idea, it tends only to be useful as a ruse to get started. It is exposed for what it is by the first few moves in which the material situation poses a question. It seems to me though that the practicalities of painting aren’t so difficult – I have a working relationship with them, and the visual language that I have established over time. It’s the seeing that’s difficult. To stand back and really see the situation before me – the whole of it, not just this or that; that seems to me to be the greatest difficulty. It’s easy to con myself, to believe the physicality of it, or a fantasy about it, or feeling that it’s great, or that it’s crap. It’s difficult to see it in a sufficiently honest or detached way. I need integrity, and somehow it’s as if the integrity of the painting can only come from that. Being detached or objective in this seeing can be viewed as withdrawing from the visceral activity, but I think it’s a co-existing with it. Peter Brook the theatre director described it as being like a hand in a glove – intimately connected with the glove yet at the same time remaining separate from it. I don’t think that state comes automatically; it has to be searched for.

Ashley West

Integrity is a word I probably overuse. According to the Oxford English dictionary it means moral excellence and honesty yet I can’t claim to ever make these things a priority in painting. The untruths reveal themselves just as frequently. There they are ugly nuisances that I often attempt to obliterate while they shout at me. Who decided that ugly and crude has greater ‘honesty’ than beauty? I remember that being the dominant school of thought in my art school days and wonder if it’s still the case.

Still, it is how one responds to these untruths or uncertainties as a painter that brings integrity to the work. Allowing what could be temporary and transient to either settle into the work or disappear if it is too much of the moment and lacking depth. I find the time spent away from a painting is useful in sorting this out. Who could ever claim to know ‘the truth’ anyway? There’s a conversation with any painting that I am working on where I am establishing the language and what I think I want to say but am constantly interrupted by what could be little white lies trying to sabotage the process. But they could just as easily be truths.

Clare Wilson

When I think about integrity, I sense that it is always there in the background, something that raises the consciousness – the internal struggle, the recognition of what is false or misleading.  For me upon entering the studio, I try not to look at the work directly - I try to catch it out of the corner of my eye  – a ‘fleeting glance’ . It is this glimpse (I hope) that enables the image to reveal itself and enter a dialogue which informs the deception that I suspect will be waiting. It is often the deception that is integral to the process of making – for me these falsehoods open a dialogue with integrity and are implicit within the transient nature of the work. Paintings are never predetermined, planned or worked out – quite the reverse; however I have to start somewhere, with something to disrupt the order, to begin the process of searching for the point where integrity becomes paramount. This discourse is formed through decisions that are often automatic, random, yet based upon a knowledge that one is searching for something that is unknown and unexpected - new territory. I try, often failing, to mistrust what I feel secure with, even when logic suggests otherwise. Integrity is something which one strives for, yet it can be misleading; it is a kind of paradox, where the recognition of deception in some way opens the path to a kind of truth.

Stephen Buckeridge

The search for integrity implies many things at the same time, and its meaning is never precise or clear; I am in agreement with Stephen Buckeridge in that. I also find that integrity in art, particularly abstract painting is a spiritual or ethical thing and it may not be directly connected with the  actual process of making, unless of course, the art is conceptual and inspired by the specific agenda to reflect the idea based on an acknowledged set of values. As artists, we may have a strong sense of it in relation to our practice, but the actual process of making can be completely clear of any thoughts associated with the paradox of integrity. In my painting process, the decisions are simply based on what works or doesn’t work.  Decisions are inspired by the discovery of something I connect to, sometimes in ways that I may not understand at first, logically, but it arouses intrigue, curiosity and imagination. So integrity can be seen as the direct understanding of what it is that I create when I am creating it.

Dragica Carlin

I most frequently use the term ‘integrity’ in the context of value based systems. In this sense, integrity is manifest in the alignment of the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ to a coherent whole. The business world offers a useful model to illustrate this concept: a company’s declared values (the ‘why’) give shape to its policies. Policy articulates ‘what’ is required to realise, achieve or “be true to” the stated aim, i.e. company values. How to actually do it, by which processes, will be documented in procedures, based on experience and best practise. As an artist I have a personal set of values relating directly to my own work and, more generally, to art, its surrounding concepts and philosophies, and the art world as a social and professional environment. The values relating directly to my own work are my ‘why’, my motivation to make paintings. ‘What’ I create and ‘how’ I go about it – my aesthetic sensitivity and preferences, personal style and method, my chosen medium and technique – are guided by and reflect these values consciously and subconsciously (intuition). This value system is not static; over time it changes with the accumulation of varied sensual  and intellectual engagement and experience. While my values may not alter easily or significantly, the more I see and reflect the more articulate my expression (method, style etc.) becomes. In this way, by the development and fine tuning of this value based system and maintaining integrity towards it, I feel I mature as an artist and over time my work becomes stronger. So when I say of an artist’s work that it has integrity, what I mean is that the work is coherent, that the underpinning values can be seen in the execution and appearance of the work. Similarly one might speak of a person’s integrity if their actions and way of life reflect their personal values. Authenticity is also a useful term in this context. Continuing in this vein, it might be interesting to look at an artist’s integrity as well as the artwork’s. I am sure not to be the first artist to have experienced certain conflicts between my own value system and others which might make demands of me, specifically social value systems inherent in different parts of society – family, work environment, the art world etc. Two specific examples:

1. An issue many of us face, and which has been with us for a while now, is the question of audience – who is our work for? This might be an easy one to answer for many visual artists – those closely engaged and concerned with political or societal issues for instance. But if our work presumes a certain level of prior experience of art, aesthetic sensitivity and an active interest on the part of the viewer, how much does that narrow down our potential audience (and number of buyers…)? Especially for artists making non-figurative paintings like myself this can become a bit of a conundrum: do I want to retain integrity with certain social value systems to avoid being accused of the “ivory-tower” attitude by making my work more accessible? And do I want to serve a market? It seems to me that the danger inherent in any sort of compromise is that it could de facto force a sabotage of my own artistic value system…

2. The question of resourcing: most of us do need to earn an income; most of us cannot support ourselves (and perhaps families) through our work as an artist alone (or at all). The balancing of art-related work (teaching, gallery work etc.), other work, marketing oneself, the whole organisation and administrative underbelly, and the actual making of art can for many of us lead to spending rather little time on the latter. And to what extent are some of us downgrading the importance of our own artistic development in attempts to “integrate” with the value system of the art market or institutions funding the arts?

Is it more important to be a professional artist or to make art with integrity? I think this is a worthwhile consideration for those of us who do not belong to the number of artists who manage both without breaking the bank. In the quest to achieve the magical realm of “living of one’s art” one might be in danger of forgetting our original motivations for doing it all in the first place.

Katrin Mäurich

Integrity in this context could be discussed in relation to an approach to practice and also in relation to individual works. In terms of an approach to practice, this is something I have kept in mind in terms of making work which sits with my own values and follows lines of enquiry relevant to my own experience, interests and culture. Integrity is something that may be used to determine a measure of authenticity in a practice, though the notion of authenticity is problematic to classify and identify. Authenticity, honesty and integrity are often bound up in notions of tradition, a singular voice, the hand-made etc. For these reasons, painting perhaps more than some other artistic outputs is seen as having inbuilt integrity but an individual’s choice of a specific medium is no guarantee of honesty or integrity. Perhaps integrity and authenticity are seen to be lacking in those things which are pursued primarily for financial gain, notoriety or power, but intentions and objectives may not be cohesive, are complex and hard to pin down. Determining the existence of integrity and authenticity is subjective, but it seems that each individual recognises it when they see it.

There can also be potential pitfalls if integrity is positioned as being paramount within a practice. Critical engagement and the relevance of a practice may get lost in a blind quest for an honest method of working. Someone may have all the integrity in the world but this is certainly no guarantee of successful work.

In my own practice, the notion of a kind of truth in relation to processes and their formal outcomes has been at times fairly clear. I have made large panel paintings onto which I fitted casters to aid manoeuvrability in the studio, these casters were then retained during exhibition in order to establish an honesty between the process of making and the display. More recently I produced a series of paintings entitled ‘Regular Work’ which were made to a set of predetermined rules, one of which was that no erasure or overpainting was permitted. This meant that of 30 or so that were made, only 10 were deemed worthy of exhibition. In this case, some could have been salvaged through reworking but in order to retain a formal freshness and an integrity to the working process laid out, they were discarded.

Painting in itself could be seen as a kind of untruth. Pigmented liquids applied to a surface to create an illusion and evoke a response. I have always been mindful of painting as a construct and am always aware of the physical nature of a painting as an object as well as a window into a world. These paradoxes permeate my practice and play out in formal conceits – a faux sense of depth, skewed perspectives, the framing of images in relation to the edges of the canvas, forms that suggest representation and forms that try not to. This approach is a reminder to myself, and perhaps to an audience, that we live in a world of constructs, and that though we are drawn to seek out truths, they constantly seem to evade us.

Ben Cove

Of course, as engaged, thinking artists, our work will always bridge both critical and visceral terrains; but I would suggest that integrity must indeed stand as a crucial, if not leading strand of any creative life. It may very well be critical engagement that can give our work a position with regards contemporary thinking and discussion, and ultimately the market. But it must surely be the integrity within a practice which will allow our work to move beyond fashion, to shake off the irrelevance of truths and untruths, to give the work longevity beyond the zeitgeist. My ambition as an artist is to make new meanings, to forge new territories. I do not believe this to be a dusty, romantic ideal, rather a vital and urgent direction that is hopefully the goal of many other artists. Via integrity we will learn that painting can exist without props. Integrity can allow the freedom for openness, for bravery. With integrity we are able to embrace fear, to partner with the unknown, and to be willing to fail / to succeed.

William Stein

To have a unified pictorial purpose and produce a painting, which carries engagement, joy or poignancy is a dimension of humanity. What may be good for the artist may also be good for the viewer. When Mondrian was asked by a journalist of a populist  New York newspaper “Who are these paintings for?”, he replied “They are for no one and at the same time I hope for everyone.” Perhaps this highlights the philanthropic nature of producing work for a public viewer, rather than emphasizing the therapeutic experience of the individual maker.

The process of making work is important in establishing a generous framework of permission; to research, experiment and feel ones way towards quality. The process also brings about the emergence of identity; idiosyncrasies and methods are part of the package, needing scrutiny but more importantly – and this takes time – recognition of repeated concerns.

Perhaps the goals of unity and integrity emerge long-term, through studio time and almost instantaneously in the individual moment of making. Arthur Danto in his book “The Abuse of Beauty”, makes a wonderful and insightful analysis of recent contemporary traditions in fine art, which I feel, promotes a sense of aesthetic and human purpose. Likewise, Elizabeth Prettijohn makes the case for a historical emergence of the need for beauty, in her book, “Beauty and Art”.

Perhaps in these times we need to keep such possibilities open.

Jeff Dellow

Reading again the contributions above, it seems to me that there are broadly speaking two dimensions to this idea of integrity. One operates in the studio, during the act of painting. One might say that this is purely personal, and therefore subjective, yet I think this is to underestimate its significance. When we allow a deeper level of seeing to take place, the dynamics, not only of the painting but also of the wider physical, emotional and intellectual processes taking place in ourselves, are exposed. All aspects of the process become integral to our enquiry. This can be difficult to entertain or stomach, because we then see things more objectively – as they are – and, usually, a lack of one form or another, which demands a deepening of the search, where we might desire an easier resolution. This reflection takes place through the personal, but I think in fact it is an opening to a higher level of observation – an objectivity that acts through the specific conditions before us. Diebenkorn said something to the effect that “the most highly prized part of painting is intuitive – when it is operative”. We don’t have access to it all the time, but we could say that the rest is a preparation (‘laying the ground’) for such moments.

The other dimension exists outside the studio – the complex of considerations related to the art market, trends in painting, ones level of success, and so on – the stuff that Katrin and Ben talk about. Here, our work is represented or misrepresented (maybe as much by myself as anyone else), but in any case it is distinct from ‘the real thing’ that takes place in the studio. It is interesting how the term ‘integrity’ is being used a great deal at the moment in the media, in relation to banking for example, where it seems it can become simply something that is promoted as part of a mission statement, but in the market place it is payed lip service to, or disregarded as business dictates. Outside of the studio we are subject to many forces. How do we position ourselves? What compromises do we make? What goes on is so complex that it would be perhaps foolish to claim any all encompassing grasp of its ramifications. But in the studio, we create controlled conditions in order to explore the nature of things, rather like a scientist in a laboratory. These conditions are in a way sacrosanct, and the most important aspect of them is the space within which reflection (through the medium of painting) may take place. Because that is the most important requisite we will put up with adversities such as insufficient space or lack of materials. Where the waters are muddied and external factors influence disproportionately the integrity of our practice (beyond the inescapable and necessary contexts we are naturally a part of) we are on a slippery slope. The special nature of the studio space is also reflected in the ‘pictorial’ space of an abstract work, where there is a focussing in on, and a questioning of, the language itself. It asks ‘who and what am I?’.

Ashley West

Starting a new series of paintings the problem solving process begins, all clumsy and careless before the urgency increases. It is daunting and unsettling as I have some ideas and expectations about the journey ahead but not enough clarity. Where is integrity at this moment? It wants to keep a low profile just because it invariably adds weight and increases the conflict. It knows it will be required soon enough so gives me a carefree hour or so, pushing and pulling paint, pouring and blotting. I suppose the materials own integrity is at play and I allow that, enjoy it even. That’s until the manipulation and control start interfering (quite necessarily).

As I catch glimpses of evolving forms, half realized and uncertain, I attempt to trap some of the elements that are about to disappear and fall into the past. Others will reappear in a new guise, often as trouble makers, occasionally as peace keepers. Will they fit together this time? What has to be removed?

More recently I have wanted to engage fully with the landscape, with an intensity and a curiosity that would remove the more obvious generalization that can creep in when there is distance from the actual source. Investigating landscape close up allows it to becomes something else. It would be a challenge to confront the unknown and perhaps more melancholic aspects yet I am terrified of  too many direct references.

Gerhard Richter, in a recent interview, talked about ‘timelessness’ in painting and about maintaining an artistic quality that moves us and goes beyond who we are. He then goes on to say ‘The unknown in painting, that is what they used to call it. But actually the ‘known’ that we see and experience, which effects us and we have to react to, actually that is the most important thing. And as long as we don’t understand that, and are unable to deal with it, it turns into the unknown, into what it was. That has an excitement all of it’s own.’ Thinking about this and my relationship with abstraction as a restless moving state rather than a systematic way of working I am considering how much of the outside world, the ‘known’ can be incorporated in the struggle to ‘find the painting.’ Alongside this lies the inevitable landscape paradox: it has an absolute and insistent presence yet is never quite removed from subjective experience and interpretation.

Clare Wilson

The idea of ‘integrity’ in relation to painting has something almost unfashionable about it. It is reminiscent of the absoluteness of modernism, singular, unphased and unconcerned with what surrounds it – a thing for itself. One can feel the cool smooth straight edge that runs parallel to the ground, the close line of the perpendicular book ends that hold the ground and ceiling apart, but nothing can be seen, there is no distance through vision, just a seeing through the close perception of touch. 
 
With the relative and contradictory state of post modernism, when the floppy canvas lid is ripped away and the once close, two dimensional square is flooded with sensory information, other entities of fast colour and duplicitous shapes overwhelm and overload. Post modernism fashions the certainty of ‘integrity’ as idealist, unrealistic even, and with absolute uncertainty, obsolete. It is, in its uncertainty, certainly past. Perhaps the only shape of integrity here is a blurred outline of a shadow, the remembering of the smooth hard edge, felt but invisible, a ghost and a presence experienced but unshaped, morphing so as to avoid sighting. 
 
But it is there.
 
Less proud, humble even, and stronger for it. Integrity has gained knowledge from its banishment. Soft and inspired, it has brought symbols of its new wisdom, the gentle jangle of travel beads can be heard, distinct from the full and constant clatter. 
 
The painting, in its singular, human sized endeavour shows now the kind of strength, not wavered by popular belief but grown through the grip of its knowledge. Understanding of the edges of its morphing frame, the start and finish of both the areas that meet to form its boundary constantly reshaping, not to obscure but in order to build complexity. In its forward form, it sees the leaky outlines, the blurry contours and  is now aware of what is around it, where it is placed. It can meet the enquirers gaze, seeing itself in both depth and reflection. It exists on its own, not unknowingly despite the other but a thing in itself and because of the other.

Georgina Amos

SB  Someone came into the show earlier and started talking about the space in the painting -  how you have to orientate yourself around the surface, and weave through the space, and he made a connection with music evoking certain emotions, and in the paintings the space is doing that – as if you’re going in and coming out, and you notice a kind of twist in the space that seems to evoke a different perception..

AW  And the layering in music.

SB  Exactly that – multi-layered.

AW  It reminds of the experience I once had listening to a piece of Gurdjieff’s piano music and I said to someone that when you are trying to listen as consciously as possible you notice how difficult it is to hear the whole thing, and he remarked that in fact it was impossible. It was a relatively simple piece, on the surface, but you still have the before and after, and the relationships from one moment to another.

SB  I think in some ways, in the paintings the layers aren’t obvious at first glance. Maybe the work begins to speak to you after a period of time, thinking about a portal or a doorway – the more you push the door open, or begin to allow yourself to be taken in by what you’re looking at or what you’re feeling. In this painting (Laque Blue), the idea was to bring something in that could appear in front but also behind, yet twisting the space around it, wrapping it or warping it around to some degree. I found it was an odd thing, unexpected, because what I was trying to do initially with that shape was to find a way of blocking a lot of the activity that existed beneath it.

AW  So the blue and orange are not necessarily to be seen as separate? It’s like there’s a dance going on between the two. In places there’s more separation and in others more proximity.

SB  It depends which part you’re looking at, it could be both.

AW  It’s a bit like that Nozkowski we were looking at with students the other day. There were these elliptical forms that at a glance looked as if they had the same relationship with another form, but when you looked more closely they were all actually doing different things.

SB  Yes, independent of each other.

AW  Well in quantum physics you have this idea that something can be in two places at the same time – simultaneity.

SB  Yes I like that idea of something being determinate or indeterminate, and how something can be in both camps. When I finished this painting I was quite shocked by it. I was wondering how I could leave it like that. But the more I thought about it, it seemed that you do have to let go or step back. It was like a step forward.

AW  Is it possible to say what was significant about that moment?

SB  Well it was the way the spatial dynamics changed, the twisting of the space. It was this oddness that surprised me. It’s like a scientific discovery, where something happens, and it’s there to disprove, and I’m not really sure what it is or why it has occurred. But having said that, I couldn’t replicate it, or I’m not ready to think about how I could replicate it. You don’t understand the causation of it.

AW  Is there a point reached where what is happening is more intimately tied up with your perception from one moment to the next. You have a fluid sense of movement in the painting, but does it start to engender a fluid relationship between the observer and the painting?

SB  I would like to think so. I like the idea of something having elasticity or flexibility.

AW  I was talking to someone the other day who was mentioning a documentary she had seen about the nature of gravity, and what surprised her was that we tend to think of planetary bodies in space as positive and negative, something or nothing, but in reality this space is more like a jelly that is more dense in some places and less dense in others, and gravity warps that space, so actually there’s all sorts of things going on in that space. You seem to be saying that in your paintings there’s something more dynamic going on between those extremes.

SB  It’s not so clear cut, there’s a subtle layering going on – it’s also got to do with history, revealing and masking.

AW  So it’s not just about painting-out.

SB  No, it’s opaque one minute, but then you look more closely and you start to see other things coming through. It’s not immediate.

AW  I suppose there’s a dialogue with modernism here. You had this idea that a painting had to be as flat or tight as a drum head, with a lot of positive and negative going on.

SB  Yes, if you look at an Ellsworth Kelly for example, you’re seeing that. There’s no real evidence of the brush-mark, or even the hand, in some paintings.

AW  But these are very different to that aren’t they, because you’re allowing the deep space to come in, but also much more ambiguity, and I’ve often thought that even in those modernist paintings, the idea of flatness doesn’t hold water really. But what painters do you gravitate towards. You’ve always been interested in De Kooning and Giacometti and artists like that haven’t you.

SB  Yes. I’ve been looking at Graham Sutherland again recently, particularly  ‘Entrance to a Lane’, and when I made this one, called ‘The Gate’,  I was thinking about that piece, but also De Kooning’s ‘Door to a River’. I wanted to bring more structure and more drawing into the piece because the blue wasn’t working the same way as in other paintings. Some see heads in some of them, a human relationship. With the larger ones there’s more of a relationship with your torso and head as you look at them.

AW  When you speak about your paintings you talk in quite an analytical way which I suppose relates to what you understand intellectually, but I was wondering, when you are actually making your paintings, and you step back from them, in what way do you work things out? Is it a feeling process, or physical, or what?

SB  Both I would say. I don’t sit back and look at them – it’s more a fleeting glimpse or something that catches my eye. It’s like when I was turning the pages of the catalogue to the recent Sutherland exhibition at Oxford. Does looking at those drawings jog some kind of reaction? It’s almost a spontaneous response, although it was kind of expected. Whether that was from some kind of memory I’d had of looking at a Sutherland, or whether it was because it needed some kind of orientation with the world seen rather than perceived, I’m not sure. Most of the paintings evolve from feeling my way around and making judgements intuitively. Usually I don’t know until I try to make a mark that it can’t be replicated and something different is called for.

AW  You’ve used references to other painters in the past haven’t you – like Constable.

SB  Yes. There’s a familiarity or a security in that. I was talking to a friend at the private view, who has known me for years, and she could see everything I’ve been through in these paintings – drawings of Falmouth Docks when I was at college, the landscapes, the whole journey, which wasn’t clear to me. Your memory or subconscious twists your experience then suddenly presents it in this guise, but the traces of the journey go right back.

AW  That adds another dimension to this idea of the twisted space doesn’t it, not just moment to moment – it can go a long way back.

SB  Well the materials I was using back then – things like wax – you couldn’t actually get rid of it. It was always there to stain the surface, yet the final mark made would be kind of indelible. You talk about memory and time; when I’ve looked at people like Bomberg and Auerbach – how do they really influence you? Where is the actual trace of that understanding and how does it manifest itself? I don’t think it manifests itself through a re-interpretation of their work. It’s got to find its own language. In terms of contemporary artists like Nozkowski, Kaiser or Mary Heilmann – there all sorts of people fizzing and buzzing around, but I couldn’t really say what it was about Mary Heilmann’s work that inspired me.

AW  How do you see your work in relationship to what is going on around you and the state of painting today?

SB  I’m interested in a sophistication which is implicit rather than explicit.

AW  Some of this work makes me think of Ian Mc Keever.

SB  He’s someone I’ve looked at. He said some very interesting things in ‘In Praise of Painting’. I think there’s an integrity in his work and that’s important to me too, but what does integrity mean? What is integral in the painting? Ones knowledge about the materials and processes one is using is integral to the process but they are not contrived. There’s always something new and unforeseen coming out of the process – that intrigues me. The outcome often comes from undoing something, so a new statement or new form can emerge.

AW  So you respect most of all those painters who engage in that risk taking as opposed to when you see a formula being used.

SB  I can admire them but I can’t work like that – it’s down to the kind of person you are, which dictates your decisions. A constant battle goes on.

AW  You talked earlier about looking a glance at things and that that probably relates to other aspects of yourself. Talking to my wife about your work, she was wondering whether the title of the show, ‘Surfaces’, was a bit of a red herring because in fact there are many layers going on, and I wondered whether this related to an ambivalence in you – about whether you want to be seen or not. In a painting you are to some degree laying yourself bare, and she said, well it’s really about a dialogue with yourself, although he probably wouldn’t want to put it that way.

SB  No but I think it’s true. I thought about it afterwards and didn’t think it was the right title.

AW  It’s physically what’s there.

SB  But it isn’t necessarily what’s actually there.

AW  It isn’t what it’s about.

SB  No, it says something about the work, but not everything.

AW They’re more like excavations aren’t they.

SB  When you look at someone like Giacometti there’s that constant re-assessing and re-affirming, and questioning what he‘s doing.

AW  Existential.

SB Yes, one can’t help seeing that in what I do. I like the idea of the hard-won image, although it’s become very unfashionable. It’s hard to let go of that. Whether that’s a by product of the time one grew up in or whether it’s just a characteristic one was engendered with I don’t know.

AW  Like a work ethic.

SB  I think it is, and I don’t think one should be ashamed of that. I think it gives a kind of gravitas to the work. One can see that it hasn’t been an easy ride, and maybe one can respect the fact that something can emerge out of bloody mindedness and hard work. Some contemporary work I look at I enjoy but at the same time there can be a jokey or ironic sense to the painting, which is fine, but I like to get underneath that – I want to see the evidence of how it has been made. When one looks at a Bacon, Bomberg, De Kooning or Nozkowski – they are not easy paintings to make. They may appear to be effortless at times but you know they’re not.

AW  Do you therefore see yourself as part of a tradition that includes these people?

SB Yes. Maybe it’s a kind of Englishness, a mistrust maybe of anything that appears too easy, too obvious on the eye.

AW  You remind me of Sutherland again. When I saw his show yesterday, I was aware of him in this landscape, and this stuff was done just previous to the war and there was this sense of foreboding – quite apocalyptic in some ways. They’re about a kind of drama between opposites. You were talking earlier about getting in there and having to push things around, and I was thinking that’s very much like walking in a landscape, treading the path, going on a journey, where you feel the physical elements around you, and I suppose you’re doing that in a painting aren’t you. Does that connect with this Englishness?

SB Yes, and for the younger generation of artists, that experience is maybe less relevant to them, and what is more relevant is this bombardment of noise and imagery and stuff, and that ends up being their landscape, whereas ours comes from something different. Maybe the paintings are ways of trying to orientate yourself in relationship to what surrounds you.

Work by Ashley West and Stephen Buckeridge

We found ourselves standing in front of the piece and saying very little for some time. It was very simple, modest in scale (with an image size of 34 x 24cm), a single motif in black and white, yet it seemed to speak from the heart and to the heart. In those few moments it seemed as if it was possible, on some level, to assimilate directly the various aspects of its proportions, composition, and symbolism – in such a way that it was as if one was being nourished by something that one had forgotten.

The etching was called ‘Black Club’, and it was by the American artist Richard Diebenkorn. It has been sitting on our wall for six years now. I glance at it now and again – sometimes for longer than just a moment – but has it enriched my life as I envisaged?. It is as if it is sufficient to know that it is there, and that at some point (but not now) I will take some time to look at it more closely. There is a tendency to assume that even though I neglect to pay it any real attention, it is still there, as I originally experienced it, intact and constant.

But is this true? What do I find if I try to give something a little more attention? First of all I notice that it isn’t easy. I am not used to really pausing – it goes against the grain of my usual momentum in which I tend to pass things by. As I try to persist a little, to stay in front of this image, I notice various associations. I am reminded of the tree of life, a sprig of clover, the trefoil of a church window, inflated alveoli and so on. These are very potent poetic images, but where do they lead?

I remember someone once saying something to the effect that, ”It is not what a thing is, but what it engenders”. After a while I am brought back to the physical reality of the image: the grain of the paper and the ink, the marks made by the tools used, and to the specific characteristics of the image: the subtle difference in the shape of each lobe, the way the white space gathers into four negative shapes that nestle together in the centre, the deviation of the right hand side of the base of the stalk, the way the form stretches between a lower and upper limit, and the faint suggestion of a path leading to a distant horizon.

Discussing the image with my wife Anne, she said that the darkness of the image reminded her of the crack in the curtains behind the altar, in the chapel where she sat, trying to reconcile herself to the dismay of breaking a treasured bowl with hand painted lemons, as she rushed for the bus to work at the hospital. Later, as dawn broke, she was struck by the rising sun that appeared transfigured, like a lemon in the bowl of the sky. Above all the image she is left with however, from Black Club, is of an angel in rapture as the suffering of the void is embraced.

As one continues to search, it is as if such descriptions, while becoming more subtle, begin to give way to the elusive thing of which they speak. Even the material substance and visual form of the image seems to give way. From the state of distraction one is faced with in the beginning, something begins to settle and a different sensitivity arises. I am brought back not only to what is in front of me, but also to myself observing it, and to something behind both.

What this seems to show is that the substance, meaning and reality of anything, and indeed its potential to nourish me, seems to be relative and proportionate to my willingness and ability to give attention to it. As that which is on the surface gives way, what is seen? It may be something of a lesser quality than I imagined. On the other hand I may discern a deeper source that it emerged from. Either way, my attention and discernment have been exercised, something has been revealed, and I have been nourished.

Ashley West

See also supplementary article, The Work of Richard Diebenkorn

NOTE: Further reading related to the process of observing works of art may be found in the essay ‘Between Form and the Indefinable’ by Christian Heck, from Gurdjieff, Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching, edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker, Continuum 2004.

Richard Diebenkorn (1922 -1993), is best known for his ‘Ocean Park’ series of abstract paintings. Ocean Park No.114 below is a good example; it is painted in oil on canvas, measures 81 x 81 inches and dates from 1979.

While inspired by the land, sea and sky of California, such paintings are not about the outer landscape, but represent an interior world, an inner place – Diebenkorn once said that in a way a painting is only complete when it is ‘a kind of world’. As such they are a search for ‘right relationship’ – a dynamic balance between qualities such as warm and cool, light and dark, above and below, different degrees of density, and so on. Like other forms of abstraction, such as geometry and music, such paintings explore the fundamental principles that lay behind the surface appearance of things – what is the nature of division and separation? what is unity? what is transformation? Diebenkorn’s paintings emerge through struggle. This can be seen through the process of statement, revision, adjustment and layering through which the composition has been developed. It is about transition, and the process of becoming that underlies and informs the ‘final’ image; it also has an openness that invites the viewer to share in this process. It is a questioning of the very act of painting, which includes not just the materials, technique and composition, or even the perceptual process, but a question about where it comes from. The painter puts himself in question as sincerely and as critically as he can and searches for something that sits rightly within himself. He made a number of interesting statements in this regard:

 “I seem to have to do it elaborately wrong and with many conceits first. Then maybe I can attack my pomposity and arrive at something straight and simple.”

 He stated that he was particularly interested in “the interweaving of emotions, and the wonderful fabric that can result if one of them isn’t squawking”. He also affirmed that “Part of painting is physical. Another part is intellectual. The most highly praised aspect is intuitive, when it is operative….There should be a balance”. It is interesting to note that he makes no claim that the intuitive is a given, rather, the implication is that it has to be worked for.

Paul Valery, speaking of Degas, said something that could be applied equally to Diebenkorn: “I admire such rigour. There are people who cannot feel they have acted, accomplished anything, unless it be in spite of themselves. That perhaps is the secret of real virtue”. Valery described Degas as being “like a writer striving to attain the utmost precision of form, drafting and re-drafting, cancelling, advancing by endless recapitulation, never admitting that it has reached its final stage: from sheet to sheet, copy to copy, he continually revises his drawing, deepening, tightening, closing it up.”

The abstract painter Peter Lanyon was driving at a similar idea when he said “…it is necessary to go beyond the immediate gesture. As soon as this is done the artist enters a human condition. To transcend this is to achieve an act of commitment and choice and eventually an arrival of consciousness” and also Graham Sutherland: “I don’t always understand what I am doing – or what I am likely to do. You might say that at this stage I am hemmed in and compressed – even thwarted. My mind is receptive – but vacant….Gradually an idea emerges: there is the knowledge that, almost in spite of myself – something significant has arrived”

So it is as if painting, for Diebenkorn, embraced a natural state of affairs – one of error, and inadequacy, and constituted a process of re-orientation.

‘Black Club’ and similar works produced in the early nineteen eighties were an unexpected interlude in Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series. This corresponds to the four year period of his mother’s final illness, when, unable to work on the larger paintings, he found himself returning to the heraldic images he had been fascinated by from the tales of chivalry his grandmother had exposed him to, as well as the talismanic playing card symbols of clubs and spades. Diebenkorn had visited Malta in 1980 as a result of his interest in the Knights of Malta. He had also collected Indian miniature paintings. In his final years Yeat’s poetry, particularly “Sailing to Byzantium”, was particularly close to his heart. “Untitled” below (1987, 24” x 19”, pasted paper and acrylic on paper) was amongst the final pieces he produced.

Ashley West

LINK: www.ashleywest.co.uk to view paintings related to the work of Diebenkorn

SOURCES

Unknown article, Andrew Graham-Dixon

The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, Jane Livingston, with essays by John Elderfield, Ruth E.Fine and Jane Livingston

Richard Diebenkorn, Gerald Nordland

Diebenkorn Graphics 1981-1988, Yellowstone Art Center/Gerald Nordland

Graham Sutherland: Correspondences. The Graham and Kathleen Sutherland Foundation

Peter Lanyon, Andrew Lanyon

‘The art audience today is conditioned to expect excitement, and not to have to be thoughtful or contemplative. It wants art experience to be like the movies as much as possible, literal and immediate, or like ads, flat, popular and ironic. It isn’t ready for meaning inhering in forms and shapes and their interaction…[Motherwell] doesn’t give us what art today gives us, a play of signs disembodied from anything substantial. He gives us forms imbued with content.’

‘From new art biennales in New Zealand to snazzy curators installing artworks out in public places in everyday locations in Latvia or on the English coast, the new global art audience is offered easily digestible significance to suit any location or context’.

‘Why take this diversion and dwell on all this dubious stuff? It’s a portrait of the post-millennial cultural mindset, what we’ve created, our version of art, the substitute of hysteria for thoughtfulness, lightness for weight. Every level of culture offers irony now, but we know we’re not wholly made up of it, and we crave its opposite, seriousness’.

‘Motherwell’s approach to paint is to make it essential, the focus and centre of everything – the question is always how is transformed, how is everything is everything arranged so the medium is alive and electric as possible? Not how can I use it in the service of something else… [Paint is] only ‘itself’ because it’s brought to life by feeling, it’s an extension of feeling, so feeling is what it communicates. Is it a routine, is it real, is it a charade or stunt, has a process been followed up to its conclusion, does the painting succeed or fail – these are the critical questions. You’re being asked, as the viewer, to be interested in someone else’s individuality, and in some kind of high level on which individuality becomes a principle and an ideal, a measure of maturity, not just a quirk or a freaky event’.

‘Motherwell really stands for visual traditions that go back thousands of years… People who are not art-educated are not sure what to do with meaning and pleasure that resides in the way forms are combined and little else… The new audience wants the essence of any artwork to be much more like the narrative of a film, and they want it to pointed to, so it’s pre-digested… being asked to consider ‘nothingness’ as a subject [as in his Open paintings] is asking too much… unless it’s tied to a narrative ‘something’ like fear, rage, nightmare, spooky aliens, spiritual vibrations, a visual trick, etc.’

‘The reason to bother with such a structured, restrained and tasteful art is that it contains the key to human sensitivity. It expresses what we’re capable of. It lets us know… how we can be better – grow, develop, refine ourselves, connect backwards to what we have been in the past, to the heights we’ve reached – and connect within to our potential in the present’.

‘Irony and sentimentality allows us to float on an ocean of not seeing and not knowing. Cultivating this sensibility is an obsession and an escape. We’re perpetuating the fun, trivia and escapism of ads and consumerism, not looking for an alternative or a higher framework. Motherwell has something to say to this state… his aesthetic distance, dignity or grandness is part of his combating of emptiness. A painter isn’t an obsessive or escapist in the way these terms apply to the current hot scene; a craftsman, yes, a perfectionist, careful, thoughtful, narrow, but not narrow in order to escape – instead, to be free’.

‘Motherwell stands for a time when there was less art going on than now but you could ask a lot more of it. What can we ask of painting today? That it has something of itself, of its own traditions, that it isn’t superficial but goes deep, that it offers structure, delight, unity, a play of forms, life, feeling, humanity, immediacy, and a take on reality that isn’t kitsch and doesn’t ironically celebrate despair and the triumph of money’.