I will be discussing Patrick Herons work.
His work interests me greatly I am inspired
by his use of colour, when I look at his
paintings I appreciate them. I am not
concerned that I might not know how they
came about, or the meaning behind them.
The colour and his use of mark making are
what excite me. Others search for an
answer in his work, and can not see how he
has gained the recognition that he has.
This is what I will be looking at
particularly in this essay.
Heron’s brightly pigmented work typifies
heron’s love and principal concern for
colour and light. Heron’s work is inspired by his natural
surroundings. He is
interested in the juxtaposition of colour
on the canvas and the subsequent interaction
and interpretation of forms.
In particular I was interested in a piece
called ‘Fourteen Discs July 20, 1963.
Blocks
of pure tint are arranged with delicate
precision in order created harmony of form and
colour.
With no subject matter to disturb the visual purity of the group of
different
forms and colours.
Although he drew his inspiration for his
work from his parents, his artistic vision
sprang from the work of the French modern
masters, Picasso, Braque, Matisse,
Bonnard, Cezanne, Valamick. I think that every artist is bound to look
closely at
other artists work, and that there is
nothing wrong in doing so, it is a way of learning
and gaining new ideas.
We know that Heron was inspired by other
artists, and also wrote about them. It
could be said that he was doing nothing
other than updating pervious work.
David Anfam said, ‘The artists polemical attitude toward Abstract Expressionism and
color
Field painting-a debate over who did what first has not helped us to see his
Achievements
more clearly.’ (David Anfam, 1998)
I can relate my view with Andrew Wilson’s,
who wrote about his work in ‘Art
Monthly.’
‘I believe painting exists
precisely in order to relate our subjective
experience,
our feelings, to our objective setting, to the world we are endlessly
observing.’ (Andrew Wilson,
1999)
‘Heron’s
concern was with the transformation (and not the transcription) of
the;visual
reality; seen by the artist into the disposition of colour-shapes to
form‘space
in colour.’(Andrew Wilson, 1999)
David Anfam says, in disagreement with his
work once more, in view of the Tate
exhibition, ‘There was no postmodern irony here, no heavyweight subject matter, not
even
a hint of concerns beyond the two-dimensional arena of the canvas itself.’(David Anfam 1998)
Should he be allowed to be put on the
pedestal that he is on?
‘The
painter’s entire enterprise represents a struggle to keep alive Matisse’s
vision of
art
meant to soothe the eye and mind. The
question that remains is whether Heron
hasn’t
just reupholstered Matisse’s proverbial armchair.’
(David Anfam, 1998)
I think that it is right for him to simply
want to satisfy the excitement and talent he has
with working with colour. His work entails
him being inspired by the world around
him, then looking at his painting and
working with it compositionally and dealing
with the spacial problems of his paintings
without referring to his surroundings, and
making it decorative. Consequently his work is appreciated by the
viewers that look
at it.
I
don’t necessarily think that artwork has to have a justified meaning of how a
finished product or painting came about. He
believed strongly that Art is
Autonomous, what mattered was the painting,
not what surrounded it. Heron says he
gets bored by any overtly perspectival organisation in a painting.
Patrick Heron said- The square-round profiles and contours of all the rocks on the
moors
and cliffs are immensely powerful in their rhythms and intervals: they are
visible
evidence of the processes of the erosion of
granite by the forces of wind and
rain
over many millions of years. This is the
place I have lived since 1955. For years
I
denied any connection between this astonishingly powerful scenery and
consciously
non-figurative
painting. (Patrick Heron, 1994)
‘In 1962 he wrote: I hate all symbols in painting: I love, instead, all images, images
physically
reflect the physical realities of the world surrounding us: but are merely
linguistic
devices invented by men.’ (June 1999) I think that what Heron can
become
inspired by so easily is a talent in
itself, and that is a justification of his work.
’Colour
is the utterly indispensible means for realising the various
species
of pictorial space. It is colour which
creates illusions of depth and thereby
brings
about the inescapable dualism of painting on the one hand there is illusion,
indeed
the sensation of depth: and on the other there is the physical reality of the
flat
picture
surface.’ (Patrick
Heron Space in Colour, 1953)
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