Painting Heroes - Sir Matthew Smith 1879-1959

Matthew Smith Nude, Fitzroy st.  

I can never get enough of Matthew Smith's paintings, and his work is frustratingly under exposed, very rarely will I see a book or postcard or anything that gives this master colourist a mention.
It was way back in 1983 that I made my way over to the Barbican Centre in London to see his major retrospective and it was a wonderful experience and still lives with me today.  It is no surprise to me to find out that this painter spent a short while at the Matisse Art School in Paris, and was very influenced by the Fauvist and Post-Impressionists that were working in Paris before the First-World War.  This painting Nude, Fitroy St. No.1 1916, was obviously painted when he was back in London.

As can be seen by this landscape painted during his war years, how influenced he was by the Irish artist Roderic O'Connor who would have been living and painting in France at the same time that Smith was there.

Favourite things

Matryoshka blue vase

I have been working on a series of flower paintings.  I feel so happy with a vase of flowers set up in front of me in the studio, especially during the dark gloomy days of winter.  I came across some very pretty michelmas daisy-type flowers in my local supermarket, and they had a strange dusty antique quality about them, and created the challenge that I was looking for.  I find working from life stops me from becoming too formulaic in the way I paint, as the permutations are endless when it comes to form and colour, as every leaf and petal presents a new challenge visually. 

Matryoshka daisies

 My paternal grandmother had a lovely flower painting above her fireplace, painted by one of her artist friends(loveday), I inherited it and it was probably one of the first examples of a portrait of flowers that I would have seen as a child. 

loveday flower painting

 I have always loved Dutch still life paintings with their intense observation giving nature centre stage.  I think I re-visited my preconceptions of a vase of flowers when watching a programme on the TV on van Gogh I realized how large and daring some of his sunflower paintings were.  They were certainly standing up on their own in all their glory, unapologetic and beautiful.  As a student my favourite flower painting was Vuillard‘s mantelpiece painting, a busy divine painting about nothing and everything, a time-snatched incidental composition, but so beautiful and spiritual, like a prayer.

Vuillard The Mantelpiece

  There is nothing more complete than painting an inconsequential vase of randomly picked daisies from the garden, it is so simple yet for me defines everything that is important in this world. However Duncan Grant’s Parrot Tulips are far from spiritual they are of this world rich and earthy, exotic and sensual the velvet cloth they stand on is tactile and warm and the whole composition for me is perfection, vibrant and masterful, it was exhibited at the Camden Town exhibition in London 1909.  

Duncan Grant parrot tulips

  
My theme this year is Matryoshka which means Russian Doll, as I am looking at Russian textiles and culture for inspiration, and  these recent flower paintings  will be at the Brussells Affordable Art Fair with The Doorway Gallery this February 2014.

Christmas Show at The Doorway Gallery

my flower paintings going up the stairs

My paintings in the hall at The Doorway Gallery

Deirdre, me and Denise

I dropped by The Doorway Gallery 24 South Frederick St, Dublin 2,
to have a glass of mulled wine and a few tasty mince-pies, and of course a look at their Christmas Show.  It looked so inviting and Christmassy and thats just the outside with wreaths of holly berries and pine cones bedecking the Georgian red front door and railings.  Denise and Deirdre have done a wonderful job of themeing the show by colour, so my paintings were teamed with Bob Lynn's and Karen Wilson's so as you can image they bounced off the wall and looked fantastic together.
I also loved Jock Nichol's small landscape and Christy Keeney's interiors.
Well worth a visit and there is lots more paintings downstairs.
The show goes on until January 30th 2014.

Christy Keeney

Jock Nichol

Scheherazade Sketch-book

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Over my career as a painter, I have built up a considerable collection of  hard-backed black sketch books, I seem to get through two a year. They are strange animals, full of working drawings, ideas, words, poetry and stuck in visual information squirrelled from various sources; to aid inspiration, create moods and document ideas.

When I was a student I found the whole process quite unnatural and I was self-conscious about working in sketch books as if an imaginery critic was looking over my shoulder.  But I got over all that and now I see them objectively.

  Of course they are going to be very personal and consciously naïve by their very nature.  But that is their strength, sketch books are personalized visual diaries, they are the artist’s reference material, full of coded visual information.  They are a means to an end:  hopefully a painting or two!   My sketchbooks are well thumbed, and usually covered in paint, as I often bring them into my studio and prop them up near at hand when I am painting.  They give me clues and annotated instructions and help to guide me, as I compose and paint my pictures.

 

My sketch book is my visual diary, but it is also another vital part of the painting process, so I am posting up a few of my recent sketch book pages that I used when I was painting  my solo exhibition, Scheherazade, which is now showing at The Doorway Gallery, 24 South Fredericks Street, Dublin 2. www.thedoorwaygallery.com, for the rest of November. 

Mermaid- Scheherazade exhibition

Mermaid 92x76cm oil on canvas

Metamorphosis

Lying here having woken

from a time-freeze-state

of empty sleep

My body has sunk into the mattress

and become one with the floor.

I move a little and twist

away from the drip-drip

of sweat that is

falling from my sternum

down into the bed

My whole body including

my eyelids

Are sluiced with a layer

of filmy water

A new skin-gloopy and complete.

‘I am a mermaid’

‘I am a mermaid’

my feet say

as I direct them over

the side of the bed.

Together they stay

as they implant themselves

into the black wasteland

of the carpet.

I rise up tall

glistening and glowing

like a dying ember-

into the dark corridor

and the chill air

as I evaporate into

the night.

Paintings to preview- The Invitation

The Invitation 122x92cm oil on canvas

All the paintings for my forthcoming solo show Scheherazade are now at The Doorway Gallery for preview.  The exhibition runs from  the 7th November to the 28th November  and I am delighted to have Pat Kenny  kindly doing the honours of officially opening the show on Thursday the 7th between 6-8pm.   We will be sending out the invitations over the next week or two, if you are interested in coming along just contact The Doorway Gallery at 01 7645895 or email at info@thedoorwaygallery.com. 

Scheherazade exhibition of paintings

Mirror-Mirror 46x46cm oil on canvas

Its not long now until the opening of my solo show ‘Scheherazade’ at The Doorway Gallery www.thedoorwaygallery.com.  The show will be opening on the 7^th November and will run throughout the month until the beginning of December.

I have worked and lived with this collection of paintings for over a year now and it really does take that long to get them where I want them, before I feel confident that they are finished. 

Picking Bilberries 92x76cm oil on canvas

I have put together a collection of around 20-25 paintings, that imbue a similar colour palette and subject matter. A world of the ordinary with an undercurrent of story telling and mystery, that brings into the work a timeless connectivity to worlds gone by .  I like to layer and weave references to other eras and cultures, for example the painting Picking Bilberries, which reads as a seasonal painting of a woman harvesting wild bilberries growing on top of a  dry stone wall.   I was influenced by a Roman wall painting at the time and conveyed that in the dress and hair of the figure.  I am also enjoying here the references to the edge of  the wood, with those cautionary childhood fairy tales in mind. Another edge of the wood painting is ‘Mossy Pillow’, this painting was inspired by visiting my mum who was moving yet again and  looking through a trunk of old photos from her childhood.  It was a rare one of her looking so blissfully happy and beautiful holding up her pet dachshund surrounded by her beloved father, mum and younger sister. For me it was so poignant because her family broke up later, with  her father moving to South Africa, leaving her broken hearted. 

Mossy Pillow  92x76cm oil on canvas

For this show I was looking at Mogul decorative art and patterns , as can be seen in the large still life ‘Fisherman’s Table’.  This painting is a very round about interpretation of the fairy tale The Fisherman and his Wife.  This is my favourite fairy tale from my childhood and I have always been fascinated by it. It  really resonated with me as a child and continues to do so, to me it illustrates a deep sense of fundamental moral truth.  Too late for the property speculators and over indulgent  banks,  I think. 

Fisherman's Table  92x102cm oil on canvas

I have reintroduced my pug from the Rococo exhibition, and for some strange reason he seems to have taken the place of the Persian King  in the painting ‘Scheherazade’, well that’s artistic licence for you. 

Scheherazade  92x102cm oil on canvas

To me, the pug breed, embodies laid back confidence and charm, nothing like the neurotic maniac that the story actually describes, but there again this is a perfect example of how my work is not illustrative and the subject matter is a means to an end for me.  All these approaches to getting a body of work together are devices that provide me with a starting point and scaffolding on which to finally get down to what really painting is all about for me, and that is manipulating colours and paint around a two dimensional surface until they look and feel right.  And how do I know when a painting is finished.  Well its as simple as one day walking into my studio and realizing that I don’t have to repaint any particular passage, that is screaming out for me to change, one day it just rests well on the eye and I can then look at it objectively and then I know I can do no more for it and I move on to the next one.