Auerbach at the Courtauld until 27 May 2024

‘The Charcoal Heads’ opened a few weeks ago at the Courtauld gallery in London. The exhibition is a small presentation of a series of large-scale drawings in charcoal by Frank Auerbach made during his early years as an artist in post-war London.

It’s absolutely worth visiting these works to experience them in the flesh, so to speak, in order to really see the intense level of enquiry and determination to get the image that he was happy with onto the paper. They’re full of corrections, gouges, tears and rubbings that reveal the scars and patches of their making. They are a moving encounter with the models who were so close to him and would continually sit for him during the period.

It’s tempting for me to try to read significance into these images based on what I know about Auerbach and the historical context that they were made in, just after the war in blitzed out London. They’re dark and heavy. They are intense studies. There’s no eye contact with the viewer in any drawing except for the self-portrait image used on the poster. The heads emerge out of the blackness and exist in their space, lost in thought. Or maybe not lost at all? I guess we’ll never know or maybe we don’t even need to know. Powerful stuff. Just great.

“Although we may be stimulated by works of art we make our pictures from living sensations. The aim of painting is this: To capture a raw experience for art.” Auerbach

A show spread over two rooms of 17 drawings and 6 paintings. Until 27 May.

The path to the sea, Costa Brava, Spain

I’m working towards a show of paintings later this year (details to follow) and have been focusing on some of the material I gathered last summer on the Costa Brava in Spain. One particular view is of a path down to the rocks discovered by accident even though I’ve been near here many times before. I loved the light and the colours but also the way as you approach the distant obscured scene begins to reveal itself. The images are my on-site responses that will inform my studio-based paintings of this view.

Mixed media A3

Mixed media A2

Bowie and Auerbach

We’ve been lucky this year for exhibitions of Frank Auerbach’s drawings, prints and paintings. There was an excellent show at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth ‘Frank Auerbach: Unseen’ that explored the evolution of his practice with a collection of over 65 works.

There are some crackers, including a new self-portrait painting from last year in the current exhibition at Gagosian in Mayfair ‘Friends and Relations’ running to 28 Jan 23.

Still on, just, is the superb show ‘The Sitters’ at Piano Nobile in Portland Road, Holland Park W11 until 16 December.

For a minute I had entertained the notion of not going to see this one. I’ve been looking at Auerbach for 40 years, travelling from the north to London to see exhibitions many times. Perhaps I felt I knew his work? Did I really need to see more? In addition to that Holland Park’s off my beaten track when I’m in London. However, I knew that was ridiculous and of course I went. I’d walk a long way just to see one Auerbach.

This exhibition, and I had it all completely to myself, reminded me, and I need reminding often that although painting can be a pain to produce, it is difficult, maybe not even enjoyable, certainly not relaxing, it reminded me that paint has the ability, sometimes of transcending it’s basic state of matter and can excite and engage on a profound level.

I hadn’t seen many of these works as they were from private collections so that added to the experience and this show includes several incredible self-portrait drawings.

One of the paintings in this show, illustrated below used to belong to David Bowie. In 1998 Bowie told the New York Times, "My God, yeah - I want to sound like that looks," in response to the work of Auerbach.

‘Somebody I like very much indeed is Frank Auerbach. I think there are some mornings that if we hit each other a certain way - myself and a portrait by Auerbach - the work can magnify the kind of depression I'm going through. It will give spiritual weight to my angst. Some mornings I'll look at it and go, "Oh, God, yeah! I know!" But that same painting, on a different day, can produce in me an incredible feeling of the triumph of trying to express myself as an artist. I can look at it and say, "My God, yeah! I want to sound like that looks." I find his kind of bas-relief way of painting extraordinary. Sometimes I'm not really sure if I'm dealing with sculpture or painting. Plus, I've always been a huge David Bomberg fan. I love that particular school…’ (David Bowie, Interview with Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, 14th June 1998).

I love the idea of Bowie, enjoying his first coffee of the day, standing bleary-eyed in his dressing gown, on whatever floor of his high-rise apartment in Manhattan, looking at and contemplating his Auerbach. Those oozy blobs of colour, the squiggles and deep crevices of paint almost about to slide off the surface are the triumphant result of so many things. The image appears suddenly as a beautiful chaos that makes sense, every element playing its part in support of the whole.

Frank Auerbach Head of Gerda Boehm

oil on board 44.5 by 37cm. 1965.

Detail of Head of Gerda Boehm

The lovErs

My Saturday afternoon session this week (26th) @sussexcountyartsclub will be extended for an hour + I will have two models posing for two long poses.

The theme is ´The Lovers.´

The session runs 3-6 pm + costs £12.

No advance booking so please arrive early to get a spot.

LuCian Freud centenary

There’s probably never been a better time to really get to grips with Lucian Freud’s work in the flesh than now. In London there are currently a number of shows dedicated to his work, or facets of it, brought together from both museums and private collections to celebrate the centenary of his birth, thus enabling you to complete your own accurate survey of his oeuvre. Many of these exhibitions are in commercial galleries and so are free to visit.

For me he’s fascinating for his meticulous approach, in all its many ways, to making work. For example, how is a painting put together? Get up really close to one of the paintings and actually see the brushwork and how it’s been organised. Quite astonishing. 👀 This level of detail is missed through reproduction.

Above: My pen drawing of Freud’s “Double Portrait,” (1985-86, oil on canvas) and “Pregnant Girl” 1960-61.

Links to shows currently showing Lucian Freud work: @nationalgallery @freudmuseum @gardenmuseum @gagosian @ordovas @hazlitthollandhibbert

58 Trees

Recently I was staying on the Costa Brava, a coastal region of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, extending for about 120 km along the Mediterranean Sea from the French border at Port-Bou to the resort of Blanes, which is north of Barcelona.

I had never intended to draw the view you see above but after I saw it I couldn’t stop myself. I have been past here many times before, probably a hundred and I have never noticed this incredible arrangement of three or four rows of trees stretching out parallel alongside the road with enticing glimpses of the sea and beach and distant rocks.

I do have a thing for verticality in my picture-making and a thing for trees so I suppose it was inevitable. I would have found it difficult to leave the area knowing I hadn’t drawn it. To appease myself I agreed I’d do just one A3 drawing in pen of a small section of the whole spread. The first drawing I did was the second one in from the right side in the photo above. It took about 2 hours.

I thought that might be it but I found myself back there the next day at the same time (5.30 pm), and then the next day and the next until I had a good wide view of 58 trees in total. It was a bit tricky doing the drawings. I had to stand the whole time and balance my sketchbook on the very thin edge of the wall in front of me with the traffic careering down the hill right behind me. Sometimes a car would slow down to see what I might be fussing over. The driver would be sitting up in the seat craning their neck trying to see what I could whilst keeping an eye on the road. Difficult.

With such a complex view it’s a delicate balancing act working out the composition. I find it’s better to approximate what might go into the drawing, get started, and conduct it as it goes. For me too much thinking and planning erodes the momentum. It’s risky as it means if the scaling is wrong to begin with then either you’ll miss some things out as they don’t make it into the sheet of paper or everything is too small and so there’s too much to draw to fill the sheet. Because it’s a pen drawing I couldn’t erase anything. All mistakes have to be amalgamated.

I met all the local neighbours as they passed. They liked it.

• Maybe there’s a painting in there? What do you think? The colours are just amazing too, like nothing you will ever see in the light of England. England has it’s own special light.

Sussex square linocut series

I’m in the process of making a new series of prints based on the architecture of Brighton. I’ve been a little bit lax with this particular cut of Sussex Square. I cut the lino in 1998 and I’ve only just recently started to print from it properly. Each print is hand printed so they’re all in different colour formats yet using the same piece of lino. There will be a max of 25 prints in the run and they are printed to order, numbered, signed and mounted.

A New View of Brighton

This mixed exhibition will run for three more days and end on Sunday the 15th. May at 6 pm. Seven artists present work based on the city of Brighton itself. My work includes two drawings of the stunning Adelaide Crescent on Hove seafront, a Sussex Square linocut, a St. Peter’s Church painting, and a pen and ink drawing of the view from Albion Hill, probably the steepest hill in Brighton.

The private view is on Saturday the 14th. in the afternoon. All welcome.

Dying sunflower

When I used to go to Italy on a regular basis I would try to go late summer to catch the fields of sunflowers just before they were harvested. I spent a lot of time moving around the landscape looking for the best dying fields. This studio painting is the result of two drawings I made in a field in August 1999. It was so hot the ground around me was cracking with crevices inches wide.