Artists on this page:
- Vincent Van Gogh
- Odilon Redon
- Patrick Caufield
Vincent Van Gogh
Winter Garden, March 1884
Pen and ink & graphite on paper
Click on the following link to view an image of winter garden
Van Gogh uses a variety of marks to bring out the potency of emotion in his work. He tried to “draw as easy as writing” which he achieved, and he became effective at using his pens for thoughts on colour, light, shape and perspective.
During my research into Van Gogh's work I came across one in particular, 'Winter Garden'. I found this image particularly intriguing and it causes a chill to run down my spine every time i look at it.
‘Winter Garden’ is one of a series of five bleak winter landscapes of his father’s vicarage. The focus of the image is on angular bore trees, stiffened by cold. They add to the starkness of the flat empty fields in the background. The scratching forceful quality of line work reduces the complexity of tangled branches. This is particularly apparent when set against the cross-hatching in the sky which gracefully describes shifts in cold light. Van Gogh uses intense marks to bring out the bare severity of the trees. The gnarled trees appear as thick knuckles with a concentration of density in the whirled knots of their trunks, with hair thin tapering on the upper branches to make illusions of light.
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Image from my sketch book. |
I had a go at trying to copy one of Van Gogh’s trees. I don’t think I was very successful at creating areas of light. I made this image by first working in pen and then ink. I think if I had tried vice versa, I may have been a little more successful.
Odilon Redon
(April 20 1840 - July 6 1916)
Odilon Redon was a symbolist painter and print maker. He started painting as a child and won a prize at the age of 10. At 15 he started formally learning to draw. On his fathers insistence he took up architecture, however he failed his college entry exams.
At the beginning of his career he worked entirely in charcoal and lithography. In the 1890's he began to use pastels and oils.
Redon: "My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. they place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."
Redon's work represents an exploration of his internal feelings, and delves deep into the terrors of his dreams and nightmares. From my research into his life and work I feel that his etchings and other images were a form of release for him from the ever present terrors that haunted his sleep and wakeful moments.
Redon: "I have often as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearane: but the day left me sad and with an unsatisfied thirst. The next day I let the source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."
To view the works of Odilon Redon follow the link:
Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield (1936 – 2005) was a British artist, born in London and studied at the Royal College of Art during 1960-63. He was a member of the “New Generation” of the 1960’s British pop and abstract artists. He was nominated for the Turner prize in 1987 and shared the Jerwood Painting prize in 1995. He was made CBE in 1996. Many of his paintings incorporated still life of everyday ordinary objects and domestic interiors. His work is individualised by his compulsive need to simplify shape; take away tone and his use of bold lines and blocks of solid and often bright colour. Caulfield says “I was aiming at reducing the means by which one described things”
To see some of Caulfield work follow the link: Caulfield'sTate collection
Caufield's use of positive and negative space can best be seen in his 'White Ware' collection.
Caufield's use of positive and negative space can best be seen in his 'White Ware' collection.
(Images from Bridgeman art online gallery)
He makes these images by using solid blocks of dark colour for the background, (negative space) and white for the jug or vase (positive areas) the contrast between the two sets of colours is magnificent and although it is possible to tell what the object is, no line has been used to identify the outline of the object, it is just a solid white shape. Somewhat like a shadow. Below are some images taken from my sketch book showing work done in Caulfield's style.
