Acrylic On Card

These two paintings are from my series of acrylic and oil on card paintings which are part of my practice of works in progress. My main influence has been taken from the works of Gerhard Richter whose abstract work in rich colours I find very attractive.

On a recent visit to the Pompidou Centre in Paris I saw one of his paintings "Huile sur Toile" achat 1988 .

Acrylic On Card

Conversation Piece (Marriage a la Mode) 1745

In this series of Marrriage a la Mode Hogarth narrates the unhappy union of a wealthy middle-class alderman's daughter and an aristocrat's son. The painting shows us the married couple "newlyweds" who have yet to retire for the night. The grotesque clock informs us it is well over 1 a.m. Their activities for the evening did not include each other. The little dog is busy pulling a woman's cap from Squanderfield's pocket. The wife of Squanderfield is making amorous gestures but Mr Squanderfield is in no shape to take on his wife's invite. The book on the carpet causes us to assume that his wife has spent the evening "at home" in the company of friends...perhaps playing cards. Hogarth via his satire wished to draw attention to the hypocrisy that exists within the society.

De Stijl (Style) Modern Art Gallery. Amsterdam

The De Stijl Gallery situated in Amsterdam in many ways depicts the contiuum of art since those early days Golden Age years of Dutch Art. In 1917 the influential movement in art, architecture and design in the Netherlands was behind the creation of this art gallery. Some of the Founders of the Gallery of the De Stijl, notably were Piet Modrian and Theo van Doesburgh .

The main idea of these founders were to bring art and design together in a single coherent,simplified system,i.e. to simplify art into pure abstraction via forms of rectangles,geometric shapes and primary colours of black and white.
I visited the De Stijl Gallery in 2005. The Gallery is situated in what I would describe as an industrial-looking area of Amsterdam and the building is quite simply built with large "warehouse-looking" rooms,quite maze-like. The collection of art is very inspiring and mostly colourful and hopefully I will be able to revisit in the not too distant future. For me it is an important gallery to visit because of its links to the development of modern art and design.

Golden Age Of Dutch Art- Emergence Of English Art

The history of Dutch Art is really quite fascinating to me and as I have discovered one could spend a very long time discussing various aspects of its history. However, I have restricted myself to mentioning some key dates of Dutch Art. In the early part of the 17th. century Dutch Art was the main focus of the art world and English Art was yet to be born, i.e. in the sense that some of our most famous artist of this era did not emerge until the early 18th.century.
Chronological : Reynolds 1723 ,Stubbs 1724, Gainsborough 1729, Romney 1734, Raeburn (The Scottish Reynolds) 1756, Morland 1763, Crome 1769, Turner 1775, and Constable 1776. The 17th. century was the Golden Age of Dutch Art (1600-1680's)
Amongst the many artists of the Dutch period were Rembrandt, Wm. Kaif (still lifes), Adriaen van Ostade (Flemish peasant scenes) Gerard Terborch Jnr. (Dutch interiors), Albert Cuyp & Jakob van Ruisdael (specialized in landscapes), to name a few of the most notable...there were many,many more.
Despite the quantity and quality of art in the Netherlands in a matter of less than one hundred years Dutch art fell into a decline in the 18th. and 19th. centuries (which was triumphantly reversed by the arrival of the expressionist genius of Van Gogh in the late 19th.century and Piet Mondrian in the 2oth. century.) The decline of the Dutch art in the late 17th.century was due to the emergence of English and French art which had become too powerful for the Dutch . Notably in the early 18th. century Wm. Hogarth was emerging as one of Englands most popular and acclaimed painters.