A Painter of Landscapes

by Janice Russell

I'm a painter of landscapes. A few weeks ago you might have found me on a remote forest track in Galloway, South West Scotland, fighting off flies, struggling to hold a drawing board down against the wind.  I had to grasp this interval of fine weather before the rain set in again - the torn clouds were almost apocalyptic, sudden vast gaps of blue, moments of grace allowing light to flood the vast spaces again.  All this would provide key imagery for future work, my photographs reminders of an internalised experience.  In the studio images could be selected and transformed into painterly marks, textures and colours.  Hard work, direct gutsy stuff; resolved in visceral, sensual oil and pigment.

All this a far cry from the alienated urban art of many of my contemporaries - minimal, stark, sterile ,colourless – over-bloated wordy pretentiousness....or alternatively it's brash, hard, raucous comic strip.  All of it ultimately in the service of market-driven galleries grasping fast profits from art commodities.

Within the ethos of post-modernism pervading art education, artistic response to anything "out there" is riddled with contradictions, ambiguities, and uncertainties.  Intimacy with the land or the environment is by definition impossible, all experience of "nature" culturally mediated.  The result is a chronic anxiety about any form of representation.  Malcolm Andrews in LANDSCAPE AND WESTERN ART (OUP,1999) writes:  "Nature, especially in the American experience, USED to be that robust "other", there to be tamed and cultivated. It was Mother Earth on whose strength and fertility the human community depended.  Now it is a fragile, anorexic dependant, to be protected and "managed".  The late twentieth century has a sharpened sense of human alienation from the natural world and a hunger for more familiarity with that receding domain." (p.213)

One way that hunger comes to expression is in the huge numbers of amateur and professionally trained artists working from nature represented in small galleries and Art Trails (work and exhibition spaces open to the public every year on a regional basis).  The work is sincere, often well-crafted but you cannot get away from the fact that almost all of it is lacklustre, clichéd, and devoid of a convincing vision and content.  Within this domain there is a great public yearning for symbols and images of an environment people wish to feel deeply connected to and want to affirm.

Who will provide the Godly service of robust, prophetic landscape art that will begin to articulate truthfully what on earth is going on out there in a 'groaning and travailing' and yet glorious creation?

If I can stand the weather and the isolated strangeness of such a calling, I'll continue to have a go myself!

Janice Russell

Language can be a barrier to seeing the whole picture as well as to creating a view of the world around us.

I want to end with this little story from our Barcelona Adventure.

My son is doing a Film Studies course at Southampton University and we are often caught chewing the cud over some film, director, cinematographer or other.  We had both seen the Spanish film, ‘Volver, (starring Penelope Cruz and written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar).  Whilst walking near the Plaça de Catalunya, on the Gran via de les Corts Catalanes - see even the street names in Spanish are like sentences(!) - Mark and I came across a most wonderful cinema called the Coliseum and it was showing this film.  (Picture to be added)

It is one of those old classical theatres, with a columned portico and manned by people like those in ‘The Last Picture Show', agèd, but still in love with cinema!  We decided after our evening meal that we would go and visit this wonderful building and watch the film.  I approached the box office with new confidence, having mastered the Spanish language that morning at Picasso's place.  ‘Dos billetes, por favor.'  Drat, she could tell by the accent that I was English; a poor show, as that never happens in Bristol!  She peered through the glass and said something about a Spaniel dog.  I smiled, using my ‘disarming smile', the one I keep for lighter embarrassing moments.  ‘Yes!' I replied, ‘Cool'.  She smiled back, more in pity I think, issuing these poor English boys with their tickets.

As we walked along the plush blue velvety carpet, another member of the staff spoke to us.  Now I've never known a language spoken so quickly, so I think he said something like, ‘paraparapara elpescky lidos'.  I turned and smiled and said ‘No hablo espanyol.'  He returned my smile and as we walked away, I could see out of the corner of my eye, a bemused look, as he suddenly realised that there were two Englishmen in the cinema and the film about to start was Spanish - and without subtitles!

We sat and watched the film for nearly two hours.  It is amazing what you can see when you don't have to consciously read the language.  We discussed his visual technique, his favoured camera positions and lenses; generally presenting two characters face-on to the camera, very direct, very intimate, also the same shot used but to the left and out of focus, it was framed looking passed the back of another character's head, we form part of the group, eavesdropping into the conversation.  When there was dialogue on the street scenes Almodóvar liked to use a short focal length, the Madrid streets out of focus, the features blurred, simply adding blobs of colour to populate the colourful backdrop.  I know what you are thinking!  They put this guy in charge of Cultural Engagement!  Hey, worse things have happened.  Remember the Thatcher years, he whispered!!

In my mind there are a number of analogies to be drawn from this wonderful little story.  Yes we had purposefully planned to do this.  I wanted to teach my son a few things.  He wants to be a screenwriter and I pray that God will be kind to my boy.  Sometimes we struggle thinking communication is about word-based messages, after all the Gospel is just a word-based medium right?  I'd have to disagree, ‘the word became flesh'; it didn't just float down from heaven to convince us of the truth!  (‘Plan B from Outer Space' perhaps?)  Sometimes we can burden our work with propaganda to engage with the world, but actually this detracts from media such as film, art and music.  However, the word needs to be fleshed-out, lived in, walking around with the heels of the Gospel of Peace worn down a little.  We need to indwell the Story so that the world doesn't need subtitles, so that they can see the world; the colour, the forms, the images our normative lives create; the world we dwell in, without the subtitles of evangelical advertising.  We need to learn about the ‘medium being the message', to allude to Marshall McLuhan.

Our problem is that those involved in this kind of stuff are not shown the difference between the common view promoted in art colleges across the UK and what it means to be an artist (in its fullest sense and not just painting), of a different faith and worldview, that pulses with hope rather than the still, dead, cold hands of despair.  The jar comes with utilising the nihilistic metaphors for life, trying to communicate something about our world and the possibility of its redemption with the language of despair.  (I'm alluding to problems here and not defining the whole subject of the matter)  An even bigger problem is that there is no Christian Arts College in the UK to train students in exciting, colourful, culturally engaging forms!  By which I do not mean exclusive, prescriptive evangelical views of the whole of life, minus the interesting bits.  Enough for now!  Next time we'll venture into dance and that wonderful thing called Flamenco.

Geoff.

CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT FOR BEGINNERS: Part One. Scribbled by Geoff Hall.

Cultural critique is like armchair football; you have a great view of the whole match, you criticise the manager’s selection, the overpaid ‘prima Donna’ of a striker who can only use one foot – ‘If he could use his left foot as well, he’d probably want £200,000 a week!’ you rant incredulously at the TV, because of course they can hear you!  However, in truth you never break into a sweat, unless the tin of beer is particularly resistant to being opened!  Mmm, tricky. 

Participation; now there’s a word to conjure with.  Lately, well for the last 15 years or so, I’ve become increasingly agitated by my own lack of it.  I don’t want to just commentate on our cultural tactics, God’s choice of less-abled, less passionate kind of nerd-do-wells, whilst sat in the Reformational Armchair of Disquiet, be it of a Dooyeweerdian or Kuyperian style and oh yes, puffing on that Professorial Cigar that I’ve heard so much about from Richard Russell; a fundamental part of reformational academia.  These were my aspirations some time ago; armchair, cigar and cultivated, penetrating critique; the stuff men and women of God are made of!  But not now!  My wife tells me that it’s down to my age; the reduced likelihood of returns from effort exerted is affecting my demeanour, allegedly.  Marriage is fun and a great leveller, just like a badly rutted, turnip patch of a football pitch, as in days of old at Derby County or Ayresome Park, or as we used to say in Hartlepool, ‘Ayresome, but never Awesome Park’!

So, this piece was originally entitled, rather pithily I thought, “Some thoughts from Barcelona concerning cultural engagement”.  I’ve just got back from there, spending four days with my family whilst the turnip patch at home was resurfaced and made more conducive to the kind of game I want to play; and also in truth, for the great occasion of my boy’s 21st birthday. 

‘Bonito!’ as they say in Spain, what a wonderful place.  However, I did feel a twinge of guilt stemming from my touristic infidelity.  Italian words kept popping into my head, which I had to quell as Spaniards look at you askance, as if to say, here’s another sad Englishman who doesn’t know where he is and is unable to speak Espanyol!  I’ve had worse insults, but when we travel abroad it is usually to Italy and in particular Venice.  If you make a linguistic mistake in Venice you can dismiss it with a little German, so that the English don’t get the blame, ‘Entschuldigen sie, bitte!’ and run down one of the lovely picturesque alleyways, dodging out-of-work gondoliers; but in Barcelona the streets are broad and people running look kind of conspicuous. 

Where was I?  Ah yes, on Sunday afternoon, returning from the Nou Camp - that’s FC Barcelona’s football ground for those of you who don’t know – I was given leave to visit one arty place, so I chose the Museu Picasso, in the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter.  I’d been warned by a friend, that what was exhibited there was obviously the stuff that none of the important galleries in the Rest of Europe (or America) wanted and so my expectations weren’t high.  A bit like going to a football club with a good ground, but once you get inside you realise that the players don’t live up to the quality of the architecture.  Middlesbrough FC comes to mind!!  Anyway, forgive my Las Ramblas of an aside and let’s get back to Picasso. 

Well yes, the architecture was rather good, the pictures too, but the restaurant was a bit pricey for my humble pocket.  So much for the idea of Reformational ‘cultural economy’ I thought and drat, I’ve come all this way to Barcelona and have to starve for the sake of a bit of art - because my £10 per week allowance just won’t cover it! 

I walked around the rooms, herded by some very ‘helpful’ security guards, ‘Gracias!’ was a word which came to mind!  It seemed I was finally getting used to the language!  Here’s a word of warning though; if as a paying customer, you want to return to a previous room to check out something again, you will be subjected to the flailing arms of the ‘guards’, pointing in the opposite direction.  As for the art, the early paintings gave me hope as a writer of yarns and indeed would give anyone in the formative years of their talents hope that, contrary to what is offered by so many galleries across this great incontinent of Europe, namely that ‘Voila!’, Picasso was born with this mature gift; born not with a silver spoon in his mouth, but with a very fine Hog’s hair bristle brush in his hand! 

Some early portraits were encouraging, along with a few landscapes.  It appeared to me that Picasso knew what he wanted to express or portray, but the painterly skills hadn’t caught up with the imagination yet.  The pigment was quite fumbled over the surface and lacked a finer display of control.  I was chuffed with myself for having come to this fine critique of his skills, but in my superior moment forgot that he was 14 or 15 at the time!  But I was right!  Along with this perceptive moment I also realised that he was much better at larger scale stuff like, ‘Science and Charity’, 1897, ‘Mountain Landscape’, from 1896, or ‘First Communion’, dated 1896. 

It is around these years that we see the evidence of the skills of the young Pablo Ruiz Picasso being honed by his formal training at the La Guarda Institute and later at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid.  His formal studies of men with unkempt genitalia (no dear reader, I know foreign languages are difficult, but this word is not to be confused with the Italian National Airline), reveal a change in his application technique, his mastery of the pigment; his painterly realisation of vision and technique. 

The Young Picasso knew what interested him visually, how to frame a landscape or rooftop view, he knew what excited him, but at times the execution was a tad lacking in dexterity.  I realise I’m not meant to say or write such things, but hey, I’m a Northerner and not used to the finer cultural airs and graces. 

I reflected upon this and thought it is a bit like me when I try to write something; the plots are there (landscape), the characters are defined (portraits), I know what I want to say, but sometimes the words come out in the wrong order or lack the correct nuance, ‘a tad lacking in dexterity’.  Gradually though I think I’m learning how to write a good story.  Language in any landscape, any location can be tricky.  In the gallery I didn’t have the language to let the guards know what I was up to.  This makes me think of my current job mentoring artists, who confessèdly struggle to find the visual metaphors, the language to say something from their own perspective, from within their own tradition, rather than utilise the visual and conceptual language of nihilism; the great yawn of a gap in contemporary Post Maudlinism.  There are many reasons for this and the topic is not really right for consideration here, a later article perhaps?  Suffice it to say, to articulate visually or linguistically one needs ‘language’.  If the visual and conceptual language is inchoate, then the art will probably exude the same quality.

Here we will leave this enchanting story.  I'll return in Part Two and look at a visit, later that day, to a cinema and draw the analogy of subtitle and propaganda!  Geoff