Cabinet Pictures

CABINETPICTURES

JANUARY 2014 SALE

CABINET PICTURES

28th January – 23rd February

Cabinet pictures tend to be small as historically they were designed and destined for small private cabinet rooms for the exclusive appreciation of the house owner. The paintings were not studies for larger works but small scale fully developed images, complete in their own right. This collection of twenty pictures amply illustrates this concept. Each artist has taken great care in creating a properly considered, fully executed work.

Ten of the pictures have been made on small MDF blocks (A5) that were included in a fundraising project for the Art For Life project at Musgrove Park Hospital Taunton. The artists were given prepared blocks and asked to be as inven-tive as they cared to be. The results were fascinating and the examples here are just a few that were submitted by both painters and sculptors.

There is always a small niche for a small picture! As a special inducement I am offering all of these at 25% discount until February 15th, with free packing and postage.

Please make payment via Paypal to [email protected] or email me at [email protected] to discuss an alternative method.

Geoffrey Bertram

GINA BURDASS ‘ART FOR LIFE PANEL’

Oil on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Gina Burdass explores the perceptions and complexities of colour. She invents her palette by making her own hues. Her paintings have used, generally speaking, a limited number of colours chosen from a broad spectrum. Painted in series, each with bands of colour, Burdass investigates the way that these colours relate to each other. “In my paintings I try to bring out the differences in the colours through their interaction and, whilst allowing each colour to retain its own distinctive character, not let any one colour dominate and shatter the unity.” These minimal works are contemplative, tranquil images that ask of us how we ourselves perceive colour and, in consequence, what effect colours have on us. £250 less discount = £187.50

PENNIE ELFICK ‘LINEAR CONVERSATION’

Oil on paper, 157 x 210 mm. Trained at Wimbledon School of Art, Pennie Elfick’s paintings are investigations of the nature of light, and of the Somerset Levels where she paints. They are emotional responses to changing elements. By omitting direct figurative references she is free to explore her world within purely abstract terms. Mood, reflection, at-mosphere, colour combine in images that can be hard edge, allusive, contemplative or even vaguely descriptive – does colour refer to an early morning mist, a diagonal line describe a shaft of light or rain? The paintings are meditative and contain an inner luminosity that comes from the layering of pigment that shifts in changing lights, echoing the shifting light in nature. The final image is therefore not static but is itself responsive to changing conditions, illuminating differ-ent facets on each viewing. £300 less discount = £225

IONE PARKIN ‘ORGANIC FORM’

Mixed media on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Ione Parkin’s paintings reflect elements of the world that she has experi-enced. She focuses on geological references, with other ideas coming from satellite pictures of the earth’s surface and microscopic detailed imagery of earth’s structural components. The paintings visually engage the eye; colour, lights and darks, shifts of space, small flecks of pigment flow across the picture surface, combining to give each painting its own energy. One can get lost in these spaces, absorbed in gaseous cloudlike forms or flowing currents of water. £275 less discount = £168.75

KITTY HILLIER ‘UNTITLED-TREE MOTIF IN SILVER’

Mixed media on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Kitty Hillier is a promising young artist based in Somerset. She trained at Bath Spa University. Working with plywood, she carves through its layers, creating textures that contrast the finely painted surfaces. She spends time getting to know the wood and finds shapes within it. Touching upon the handmade, her work suggests deeper spaces that reflect landscape shapes and elements without being literal representations of the natural world. There is a hint of Eastern mystique in this work. £125 less discount = £83.75

KATHY RAMSAY CARR ‘THE RIVER AT TWILIGHT’

Acrylic on board, 255 x 255 mm. Kathy Ramsay Carr spent most of her childhood in British Columbia, returning there in the 1970s after graduating from Bath Academy of Art. She then worked for many years as head of Design in the National University of Mexico. Carr now lives in Devon, working in a studio overlooking 30 miles to Dartmoor, where she regularly walks, as well as visiting North Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. Her paintings are a direct and instinctive response to the landscape seen during these journeys. This painting of a river at sunset is full of atmosphere, with the light reflecting off the water contrasting the deepening shadows of the trees, and the luminous marbling in the sky. £450 less discount = £337.50

NAN ZHANG ‘PARADISE BAY, ANTARCTICA’

Oil on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Nan Zhang grew up in China, trained as a medical researcher and then attended Fine Art at Santa Monica College and Brentwood Art in America. Zhang takes inspiration from her extensive travels. Her work is a spontaneous and an intensely emotional response to the natural world. Her paintings are freely intuitive with loose rhythmical structures that come from what she sees as the indefinable mystery of nature. This painting comes from a suite of work that resulted from an excursion to Antarctica. £80 less discount = £60

CHRIS DUNSEATH ‘REVERSAL’

Wood and spray paint on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Chris Dunseath is a prize winning sculptor whose work has been seen across the UK and abroad. A graduate of the Slade in London, Dunseith’s work is heavily influenced by ancient Egyp-tian art, the construction of functional objects and of time, space, mass and relativity in quantum physics. Primarily abstract, his work is constructed from a variety of materials including wood, stone, bronze, paper pulp and Jesmonite. This work comprises a fretwork made of light wood laid on the left panel and sprayed black, removed and placed in the right half to create a variation on the concept of ying and yang, the two halves interconnected and interdependent. £350 less discount = £262.50

JENNI DUTTON ‘THE KISS’

Mixed media assemlage on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Jenni Dutton is a graduate from St Martin’s whose current work has evolved from a series of conceptual dress sculptures that began in the late 90’s. This extends the concept of body wrappings in a series of sculptures using shop mannequins - either actual figure display models or plaster casts taken from them. These torsos are covered with smashed up bits of china and objets trouvés - plates, cups, figurines - that give each work its distinct personality and narrative. While there is considerable whimsy and charm at work here, each torso is perfectly well resolved in concept and design. This much smaller work encapsulates in a nutshell her use of frottage and objets trouvés. £250 less discount = £187.50

EILEEN COOPER RA ‘UNTITLED’

Mixed media on paper, 190 x 145 mm. Eileen Cooper RA (b.1953) is a figurative artist who is renowned for her stylised images of women and animals. She is a painter, printmaker and Keeper of the Royal Academy. She draws with bold outlines and, like many examples from this series, this is added with richly coloured highlights. There is often a play-fulness to the narrative, and a certain dreamlike character to the scene which makes her work instantly recognisable. Particular meanings tend to be elusive but the nature of relationships is a regular theme, often centring on her family.£500 less discount = £375

ALBERT ‘RUNCIMAN’ CUMMINGS ‘THE MAGICIAN’

Ink and watercolour on paper, 70 x 55 mm. Albert Cummings, who went by the pseudonym ‘Runciman’ after the renowned 18th century Scottish artist, was a talented painting restorer who worked for Aitken Dott & Sons in Edinburgh (now known as The Scottish Gallery) before joining the National Galleries of Scotland. He was a fine artist in his own right and was wont to make drawings and paintings loosely suggested on the work of Old Masters. Et in Ar-cadia Ego was a favourite theme deriving from Poussin’s famous painting. The Magician is a fine example of his small, slightly surreal fantasy images, the classical props reminiscent of the work of another Scottish painter, James Pryde (1866-1941). £400 less discount = £300

AMANDA WALLWORK ‘UNTITLED - ENCLOSURE’

Oil and graphite on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Amanda Wallwork paints history with images that reflect the marks and traces, both deliberate and accidental, left behind in the land by previous inhabitants. Her images are abstract inter-pretations that symbolise stories, places, journeys, rituals and time. They also form a mapping - of both the present forms seen openly in the landscape, and in the past of shapes buried within the ground, often only seen from above. They explore the archaeology of landscape in a form (oil on plaster) that itself has the appearance of a found object. Wallwork constantly rubs back the pigment, allowing the white ground to influence the surface, which provides the image with an inner glow. The surface is covered with fine scratches and imperfections that deflect the light and ani-mate the patina. £350 less discount = £281.25

DAY BOWMAN ‘STUDY FOR GASOMETER 1/2’

Mixed media on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. This painting belongs to an extensive body of work, the Urban Wasteland Project, that toured around the UK in 2011-2012. Industrial wastelands are not an obvious choice as subject but as was noted by Andrew Lambirth “...the grittiness of the subject is transformed and interpreted by art....the effect is not as depressing as it sounds, but strangeley heartening.” She says “I set out to explore the landscapes of Britain that are passed through, ignored or deleted from the collective memory.” Bowman’s art is full of vitality and energy that takes the disfigured and transforms it into something almost beautiful through her choice of materials and gestural mark making. £235 less discount = £176.25

SIMON KLEIN ‘PETERSHAM HOTEL, FROM PETERSHAM MEADOWS’

Oil on board, 107 x 177 mm. Simon Klein lives in Richmond, West London. This small painting comes from a series of local views of the Richmond area. Klein’s gestural brushstrokes suggest the lay of the landscape in simplified forms that are sparingly applied. The richly coloured shapes are well balanced, the focus in this painting being the red brick of the hotel in the central focal point of the picture. The sweep of blue/white sky across the top edge unifies the image, its light reflected in the pond below. £300 less discount = £225

JOHN HILLIARD ‘WEST LIGHT SERIES VI’

Pastel on paper, 208 x 298 mm. John Hilliard is a self taught artist working in West Somerset whose imagery is inspired by the North Devon and Somerset coastline where he walks with his dog. Working in a J M W Turner-esque manner, his oils and pastels capture the atmosphere of reflected light off the water, suffused into clouds of colour. His pastels are particularly ‘painterly’. These are delightfully ethereal depictions of coastlines with which he intimately familiar.NB this work is mounted but unframed. £300 less discount = £225

JUDY WILLOUGHBY ‘WINTER ORCHARD’

Mixed media on canvas, 200 x 200 mm. Trained at Birmingham School of Art and the University West of England Judy Willoughby responds to the landsape around her in West Somerset. She is a painter and printmaker, the diver-sity of her printmaking - etching, monotype and collograph - reflecting her work in a broad range of media. Winter Orchard is a moody, atmospheric work whose surface is animated through touches of gold and bronze that counter the abstracted, blackened branches. The visual balance between the observed and the fanciful is well controlled. £200 less discount = £150

DAVID ALEXANDER ‘PORTREE, ISLE OF SKYE’

Acrylic on canvas, 128 x 128 mm. David Alexander is one of Canada’s most highly successful landscape painters. He works in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He was invited to work in Scotland by the Scottish Gallery and while touring the Highlands made several small paintings which formed the basis of his exhibition in Edinburgh. His manner of using thinly applied acrylic on to a transparent primed canvas was regarded as unusual by the Scottish audience but it owes much to his Canadian background. His handling of the acrylic is more reminiscent of that of a watercolourist though the paint here is more opaque. In this way he allows the nap of the canvas to contribute to the painted surface. £360 less discount = £270

GORDON FAULDS ‘DELUGE’

Oil on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Gordon Faulds is a Somerset based artist born in Paisley, Scotland. His works comprise still life and objective drawing of objects that he has collected and accumulated. Often they are rich in metaphor, or they may reference other artworks or artists work. In this case Deluge suggests a Dantean nightmare vision in which he cleverly incorporates a reworking of Théodore Géricault’s 1819 painting of The Raft of the Medusa. This is a challeng-ing picture in that the subject is well disguised into an abstract colection of marks that can also be seen as the back of someone’s head. The metaphor is left to the viewer to determine. £275 less discount= £206.25

MARK KARASICK ‘THE KISS’

Encaustic and pigment on MDF, 148 x 210 mm. Canadian artist Mark Karasick paints with synthetic acrylic wax into which he adds pigment, building each layer of the wax with separate painted elements to create images that go through the depths of the wax in an almost holographic way. His superb ‘drawing’ gives the images the superficial semblance of a photograph though no photography is used. The Kiss focuses on the shape of the mouth and extends his previous facial explorations centred on the mouth shaping the sound of vowels. Karasick presents to us those facial expressions we barely note. The pink blobs create reference points in the ‘hologram’, providing markers for the image’s depth of field. £400 less discount = £300

RICHARD GILBERT ‘WABASH STUDY NO. 9’

Pastel on wood, 255 x 175 mm. Richard Gilbert is a figurative artist who trained at Wimbledon and Chelsea Schools of Art. During 1987 and 1989 he worked in Chicago under a Harkness Fellowship - this work came from that stay. Here he captures the animation of the streets in Downtown Chicago, in this instance with two children running ahead of their escort. It is a charming vignette. Gilbert exhibited with Raab Gallery, London but now lives in the USA. £450 less discount = £337.50

ANDREA ROWBOTHAM ‘BLUE CHINK’

Mixed media on board, 115 x 115 mm. Andrea Rowbotham graduated from Somerset College in 2009. Her work is intuitive, in which colour and line are reduced in shape and form. Her aesthetic focuses primarily on combining direct visual reality with memory, making images that contain subjective feeling and sensations of the experience of being in the landscape. The work includes a strong graphic element that not only underlies the structure of her pictures but can impose itself on them by scouring through the painted surfaces. £125 less discount = £93.75

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