kathrynocalearninglog.files.wordpress.com€¦  · Web viewconservative. Everything is polished and tidy – the dining table reflects the mother very clearly and the hostess trolley

Anthony Green RA

“My mother alone in her dining room”, Photo credit: Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia

Anthony Green’s work is known for not using regular square or rectangular canvasses, but rather using eccentric angles to display ceilings, walls etc from differing multiple perspectives on one canvas. Walls and ceilings are stretched so that for example we can see a ceiling when our perspective is looking down on a scene from the ceiling. His paintings typically display domestic scenes, most often showing his family.

In “My mother alone in her dining room”, the artist’s mother is placed very centrally with a large degree of symmetry in the room behind her. I think this is to underline the sense of her control, of someone who is neat, orderly, very traditional and

conservative. Everything is polished and tidy – the dining table reflects the mother very clearly and the hostess trolley is carefully parked next to a sideboard. Her face is serious, even a little severe with a very slightly quizzical look, as if she is tolerating having her portrait painted but not entirely approving.

The most striking thing about this picture is the intense cold acidic green that most of the room is painted in. It doesn’t give the feeling of a warm domestic scene but rather it makes me think of disinfectant. It is a rather other-worldly light, a world maybe alien to the artist himself. We see the mother straight on as if we are standing in front of the dining table (being scolded?), but the rest of the painting is viewed from very high perspective. It is as if she refuses to conform to Anthony’s unusual angles.

“The bathroom at number 29” Photo credit: Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia

This is painted in much warmer colours. It is an intimate portrait of a domestic scene showing moments of care and also of eroticism. The point of view gives us a very comprehensive picture and a wealth of detail from which we can extrapolate much about the lives of the couple. The bathroom is cramped and full of items, but it is not untidy rather casual, unfussy. The bare light bulbs in the bathroom and in the passage outside the room hint that this is a small and modest home. The coat hangers show that there is probably no garden or outdoor space to dry clothes after washing them. But there is a lot of affection in this painting. The wife is washing her husband’s arm and he is holding her head. They lean in towards each other. In terms of colour this is the warmest area of the painting with warm flesh tones and pinks. These warmer colours are reflected in spots around the painting – the hot water bottles, the bathroom cabinet and other small dabs of pink and orange.

We also see a hint of their day to day lives. Two toothbrushes, telling us it is just them in this house/flat, no children. The man’s watch and glasses have been put on the shelf while he bathes. There are also a lot of feminine touches – the crocheted hot water bottle cover, the large jug to the bottom left, the bits and pieces on the shelf above the bath. It feels like a contented home.

“Victory in Europe/the Greens 1945”, Photo credit: Arts Council CollectionI assume this is a self-portrait of the artist as a young boy with his parents (grandparents?) on VE day. Again the canvas is an eccentric shape, but the impression here is that the angles are there to limit what is seen. Once again we have the perspective of a fly on the ceiling looking down on a tableau. Everyone is mid-action, the lady cleaning out the firegrate, the man entering the room with produce from the garden and the young boy dressed for choir showing a lattice pie to his mother. We have the same sharp acidic green which I also echoed in the cabbage. The elder male is in warner colours and coming from a yellow/orange hallway. It is interesting that no-one is smiling although VE day must have been a day of great celebration, of throwing off the restrictions and the caution that the war had demanded.

In all three of Anthony Green’s paintings there is a story being told but we only have certain clues to piece together what that story might be.

Colley Whisson – Australian contemporary artist – modern impressionist, known for his control of light. These paintings are in contrast to Anthony Green’s contorted realism. Here we see an artist painting the light.

“A quiet corner Tasmania” This is the Colley Whisson painting that first caught my eye. The colours show a gentle warmth, with dabs of a soft green and a pale blue. The composition, with the calm measured grid of the window and the low horizontal tables and assorted pots, and the muted toned down colours give a sense of tranquillity and peace. You can imagine sitting in a chair, reading a book, and looking up to this small domestic view. This is achieved without great detail but a few careful strokes giving us enough information to complete the painting in our heads. Everything is defined by its relationship to the light.

“A time to relax”. In this picture the sunlight is brighter and the woman seems to be in a moment of indecision, whether to stay inside reading the papers or to go out into the sunshine. Much paler colours have been used to show brighter sunlight from an earlier time in the day than the previous painting.

Jennifer O’Connell is a New England still life artist, using strong saturated colours in her oil paintings. She paints often in blocks of colour to build up an impression of the objects, in a similar manner to Van Gogh (although he used much smaller individual strokes).

“Unstill life” At first glance this seems a completely still interior but the title makes us look again and we see boxes and things being wrapped. This is a tiny insignificant corner of a room and the most simple of items – a plain wooden chair, some cardboard boxes, a couple of vases. But we infer that the life of the owner of these items is busy with change. The colours are bright and strong, and painted in an energetic manner.

“View of back porch”. Again this is painted with strong warm colours, contrasting the heat and light outdoors with a cooler calmer hallway in strong blues and greens. We have some intriguing views – a glimpse of a room upstairs and a thin vertical shaft of light to another downstairs room, as well as the distant view of the garden, past the dining table and a glimpse of a sofa to the bottom right. It invites us to imagine who lives here and their life. From this point you could choose to go anywhere in this house.