In the Green Room at Messums London until Friday 5 September. Then by appointment.
Portraiture is a discipline that goes beyond the depiction of the human face. Portraits are about representation, but great portraiture captures the spirit of a living subject and translates it into inanimate form. Observation is fundamental to all visual thinking – if one does not observe, one is not aware. Portraiture is an acute manifestation of this and Messums London is pleased to present the work of five portrait artists: Henry Lamb (1883-1960), Euan Uglow (1932-2000), Brian Taylor (1935-2013), Saied Dai (b.1958) and Antony Williams (b.1964), whose portraiture centres around the practice of observational drawing as a means of understanding the nature of visual relationships – their underlying patterns and structures – allowing them to go beyond slavish copying and photo-realist reproduction, to express the soul of their sitters.
In particular, the artworks on show utilise the science of geometry as part of a process of meticulous analysis and investigation of form, to reconfigure and push their work towards greater expression, capturing the essence of the sitter. All observation is founded upon what has been absorbed and understood, rather than just what is seen. Drawing comes from seeing and seeing and thus allows for a great deal of relativity – Ultimately, it is an expression of the artist’s perception and interpretation of their subject. Freedom is often the outcome of precision, but artists cannot take the world as it comes; they must select what has significance for them and impose form on what they select. The exceptionally gifted make poetry from what others cast aside and thus open our eyes to unimaginable possibilities.
Silence is often much more difficult to create than noise, and more profound. Portraiture is much concerned with atmosphere – a mood or theme; drawing, tone, colour and composition are all in the service of that quality. A mood is the living heart of a work of art and is the curious condition whereby all the elements somehow manage to add up to more than the sum of their parts. This cannot be simply manufactured but, tentatively, through the measurable, one may perhaps arrive at that which is immeasurable. We are all in a constant state of change, aging and evolving. Portraiture captures the fleeting and aims to fix it for all time, so that it becomes permanent and monumental.
“The ultimate question is whether a piece of work has any mystery, an intangible quality, in short – a magic? When this occurs, it is as mysterious to the artist as it is to the onlooker and thereby most precious.” – Saied Dai
Featured artists: Saied Dai, Antony Williams, Henry Lamb RA, Brian Taylor MRSS, Euan Uglow.
