James Woodward

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN When artist Joan Miro was 24 years old, he predicted that he would do his best work in old age. The exhibition, “Joan Miro: Instinct and Imagination,” documents the work he did in his 70’s and 80’s.  In keeping with the idea of positive aging, Miro described himself as working like a gardener: “Everything takes time… Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen.” His life-course also manifested the process of…

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 I was determined to make a significant   detour during  August to see some public sculpture on Crosby beach and this short piece gives me an opportunity to show off some of my photographs. The journey to Liverpool  was not in vain and  I was able to glimpse again at first hand the sheer genius of Gormley  as a sculptor and public artist. Another place  consists (I believe 60)  cast iron sculptures of the artist’s own body, facing towards the sea….

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I love surprising discoveries. As a very enjoyable lunch last week in a London restaurant in Notting Hill this particular picture captured my imagination. I was sitting opposite it and amazed at its rhythmic and soothing effect. Painted by a Cornishman, influenced by American abstract Expressionists (especially Jackson Pollock) Lanyon is  rooted in the Cornish landscape. Looking at this gave me a extraordinary sense of being in nature. Have a look closely at it. Painted in 1958 and entitled Barley…

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I love surprising discoveries. As a very enjoyable lunch last week in a London restaurant in Notting Hill this particular picture captured my imagination. I was sitting opposite it and amazed at its rhythmic and soothing effect. Painted by a Cornishman, influenced by American abstract Expressionists (especially Jackson Pollock) Lanyon is  rooted in the Cornish landscape. Looking at this gave me a extraordinary sense of being in nature. Have a look closely at it. Painted in 1958 and entitled Barley…

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This painting comes from one of three series of canvases painted by Rothko in 1958-9 in response to a commission for murals for the small dining room of the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York. The Four Seasons, one of the smartest restaurants in the city, is in the Seagram Building, a celebrated classic modern skyscraper on Park Avenue designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. As he worked on the commission Rothko’s conception of the scheme became…

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  Painted in August 1953. It is one of the series of paintings known as ‘Beaten Pastes’ (Pâtes battues) executed between March and December 1953 of which Dubuffet has written: ‘These paintings are done with a smooth light coloured (almost white) paste, fairly thick, spread unevenly and rapidly with a plasterer’s knife over layers already thickly painted and still fresh, in such a way that the various colours underneath show where the paste is missing, as well as tint the…

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A popular feature of Chichester Cathedral is a stained glass window on the north side, designed and created by the French artist Marc Chagall. The window is inspired by Psalm 150, which urges its readers to ‘let everything that hath breath praise the Lord’. Vibrant and colourful, our Chagall window encompasses aspects of the Anglican and Chagall’s own Jewish faith. Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, in his preface to Chagall Glass at Chichester says:  “The concept that Art can add…

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David Jones Artist 1895-1974 Art for David Jones is a sacramental process – the record of interface with God. Artworks are the fragments of traces left over from this colloquy.  These residues are in exact remains and it is their very imperfections that compel artists obsessively to continue with this process of creating each day; and indeed in all of our life it is our failures that are the catalyst to regain the contact we seek from the luminous.  This…

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