BBC Your paintings features CCA artistsThe BBC has launched an online resource called 'Your Paintings' which aims to catalogue all the painted works owned by the nation. Tom Phillips has his own artist page where you can view 48 paintings by the artist in public owenership, along with information about where the paintings are held.
Other CCA artists whose work features on the site include Sir Peter Blake, Sir Terry Frost, John Hoyland, Maggi Hambling, Sandra Blow, Bruce McLean, Maurice Cockrill, Patrick Hughes, Donald Hamilton Fraser, Brendan Neiland, John Piper, Barbara Rae, and Feliks Topolski.
CCA Galleries at the Royal Academy Summer ExhibitionBritish Summer time means cricket, strawberries and cream, and the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. This unique event is on from 10th June- 18th August and 2013 is its 254th year! What makes the Summer Exhibition so special is the combination of work by leading contemporary artists combined with submissions from lesser known artists selected by a panel of RA's. Highlights include original works by CCA's Tom Phillips CBE RA in a room dedicated to portraiture. The exhibition also features prints by Brad Faine, Barbara Rae CBE RA and Dan Baldwin. Tickets can be booked in advance or bought on the day, for more information please visit www.royalacademy.org.uk
CCA introduces British contemporary artist Denis Ryan
Denis Ryan RWS(1948-) was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 2008. Denis was born in London and studied for an MA in Fine Art at Watford, Hornsey and Ravensbourne colleges of art. His career began in film animation and, later, illustration. Successfully combining both he worked on award-winning films as well as numerous TV and film commercials. Having worked in commercial art since leaving art school he now focuses exclusively on fine art. He exhibits with the RWS and has exhibited in Cork Street, the Royal Academy, Mayfair and internationally in Italy, China and the USA (Charleston, Texas and the OK Harris Gallery in New York, home of realist painting). Denis fills notebooks with sketches and ideas on his travels, collecting collage material and taking many photographs. He has a strong emotional attachment to the city and the recurrent motifs in many of his paintings reflect this, particularly his recent series of neon signs. He exhibits regularly with the “Art of the Real” group, a collective of like-minded artists sharing the same philosophy, style and approach to painting, of which he was a founder member in 2010. ‘I work from my own photographs, the urban environment offering me a lot of raw material. The current neon series has the metal, glass, stainless steel and strong colours that I find both a pleasure and a challenge to paint. I hope the strong composition and my palette, along with the interesting light sources, which play a pivotal part in all my paintings, create the desired impact, producing a painting full of visual excitement.’
On a trip to Coney Island Ryan painted a ‘Playland’ neon sign, ‘That sign pushed the right buttons for me. I realized it had all the things I enjoyed painting- bits of rust, electric cable, worn-out plaster, the hard-edged shapes of the sign itself, the reflective materials and the deep shadows.’ This initial work has led to a series of paintings featuring neon signs. The Neon Alphabet transfers these ideas to the medium of silkscreen, offering new challenges and opportunities to the artist. The print series uses collaged elements and glazes to create texture and depth. Each print in the series depicts a different neon letter; the silkscreen stencils being built up from photographic studies made by the artist. The series represents a love letter to the urban neon landscape, as well as the artist’s fascination with these gritty, old-fashioned and decaying signs that are rapidly giving way to more modern electric alternatives; echoing the ever-changing nature of our cities.
NEW RELEASES by Joe WebbCCA Galleries is delighted to present new limited edition silkscreen releases by British contemporary artist Joe Webb: Back to Black (diamond dust) and Back to Black (gloss).
Black to Black is about the beauty of the female form with nothing to distract from it. Webb’s image is the epitome of understated elegance and glamour. The simplicity of a female figure highlighted against a black background is enhanced by the delicate sparkle of diamond dust on her jewels. By excluding most of the face from the picture frame, the figure becomes anonymous; Webb puts the emphasis on the shape and form of the body. Examined objectively, the body parts appear to float out of space, an almost abstract shape.
"Back To Black is taken from a series of new collages I've recently made. There's a continuous unbroken line throughout the body parts...it's my most minimal work yet, only the flesh of the subject is left which produces an almost abstract shape. These were in part inspired by Henri Matisse's 'Blue Nude' cutouts. I like Matisse's idea of 'painting with scissors' and the way his work became so minimal and concise in his later years. I enjoy referencing other artists work then taking it somewhere else."
NEW RELEASES by Martin Richardsons
CCA Galleries is delighted to present three new limited edition lenticular print by Martin Richardson: Eve, Star and Strips (blue), Star and Strips (vermilion). These new works by Martin Richardson represent a departure from three-dimensional imaging into real-time animation. 'Eve' is the first in a new process that combines laser etching with lenticular print in a composition that depicts the female figure in movement.
The second and third, 'Star & Strips' (blue and Vermillion), combines three-dimensional abstract form in vivid colour to complement a dancing Elvis figure as musical tribute.
Richardson’s work is a marriage of technology and art, ‘I am able to create ever more realistic images- greater resolutions, greater animations using a much more fine art development approach. I can now capture five seconds of time into one feature- there is a real potential to tell a narrative. The technology in itself is an art and has potential to display new art and new ideas.’
NEW RELEASE TV EYES Happy Happy by Dan BaldwinCCA Galleries is delighted to present a new limited edition silkscreen diptych by Dan Baldwin: TV Eyes/Happy Happy.
Originally conceived as two separate pieces, chance led to TV Eyes and Happy Happy being placed next to each other in Dan Baldwin’s studio. Viewing them next to each other made the artist consider them both in a new light and see parallels and connections between them that he had not originally considered. Baldwin re-worked the right side of TV Eyes so that the abstract composition of Happy Happy seemed to flow into it, creating a diptych that moves from figurative to abstraction and from complexity to simplicity. Happy Happy is an abstract exercise in colour and form, in which Baldwin plays with the ideas of art as therapy, and how chance can be incorporated into art. Ink dripped from pipettes created the lines of the grid; the element of chance dictating whether the lines merge, become fatter or thinner or veer off. He then counted every blank area created by the grid (1829 in total) filling each one with one of one hundred colour tones he had mixed. The act of filling each blank square and choosing the tone that created the best balance and harmony was a very satisfying and almost therapeutic process for the artist, ‘You realise that an experiment in randomness is not possible. As an artist you are making instinctive decisions-may be subconsciously-all the time; which colour should sit next to another and so on. There is a satisfaction in being liberated from figurative composition, being free to balance colour and form only. Once the work was completed I found it really hard to drag my eyes away from it; there is something mesmerising about 100 colours competing with each other and merging together. It reminded me of when you stare at a television screen and your eyes go off into pixellated abstraction.’ TV Eyes reflects both Baldwin’s concerns as the parent of a young child and the modern domestic environment generally. Figures, symbols, and motifs pertinent to these ideas populate the composition, and as the eyes of a telly addict glaze over and become mesmerised, so TV Eyes melts into the abstract colour grid of Happy Happy; after all what is a television screen but millions of tiny pixels of colour? The photographic image of a young boy on the left side of the piece represents the innocence and vulnerability of children as they are exposed to mass culture through the television screen. Warm domestic and childhood motifs: the loving mother, toys, chicks, childish scribbling, are contrasted with darker imagery: skulls and eye sockets being pecked by those afore-mentioned innocent chicks, as well as scientific motifs- reflecting the beneficial educational power of TV.
original mixed media on canvas of TV Eyes/Happy Happy
NEW RELEASES by Peter BlakeCCA Galleries is delighted to present six new Found Art limited edition prints by Sir Peter Blake.
Found Art: Peral Buttons- signed limited edition inkjet print with silkscreen glazes by Sir Peter Blake. Commercial objects and art can be things of beauty. By enlarging them and presenting them as fine art, Blake enables us to see things in a different way. He also awakens a sense of nostalgia for an age where even the humblest of products were produced and presented with great care and great design, as we see here in this gorgeous set of pearl buttons. This image combines the domestic with the elegant simplicity of Japanese design.
Found Art: Eggs- signed limited inkjet print with silkscreen glazes by Sir Peter Blake. Found Art: Eggs reflects Blake’s admiration for the beautiful illustration in natural history encyclopaedia’s of the nineteenth century, this page showing the diversity of egg-types in nature is a perfect example of this beauty. Blake collects such books as part of his collection of printed materials and searches through them for inspiration as well as for images to use in his collage work. The key tenet of the Found Art series is to enlarge non-art objects and images to allow the viewer to see them in a new light. The enlargement of this page allows us to see every detail and sheen of texture of the eggs depicted, to see the page takes on an almost abstract quality, concerned with pattern colour and texture. The scientific layout of these specimens with their labelling etc. would hold great appeal to the collecting instinct of the artist. Found Art: 1d Book- signed limited edition inkjet print with silkscreen glazes by Sir Peter Blake. The Found Art series continues with this exuberant cover from a ‘dime novel’. Frank Reade was the protagonist of a series of dime novels published primarily for boys. The four Frank Reade stories concerned adventures with the character's inventions, various robot-like mechanisms powered by steam. A very long series of juvenile novels followed which featured the son of Frank Reade, Frank Reade Jr., as its teenaged inventor-hero. These stories were written by Luis P. Senarens (1865–1939) with the pseudonym Noname. Frank Reade Jr.’s inventions included airships, submersibles, steam-driven and electrical land vehicles, and steam-powered robots- as seen here with the ‘Steam Horse’. The Frank Reade stories are perhaps the best known of the many boys' invention fiction series published in America during the later 19th century. The choice of such a subject is typical of Blake’s oeuvre; combining a nostalgia for childhood objects, an interest in popular entertainment and the use of rare printed materials from him personal collection. Found Art: Clowns- signed limited edition inkjet print with silkscreen glzaes by Peter Blake. The circus and clowns in particular have always been a motif in Blake’s art. The subject matter is reminiscent of his exciting childhood excursions to the circus, and also reflects Blake’s interest in the folk and commercial art and signage that can be seen at circuses. Here we see a selection of vintage illustrations of clown faces in all their gaudy painted glory, a sort of rogue’s gallery of the circus. These faces evoke all the joy, colour and exuberance that we associate with clowning. Found Art: To a Darling Child- signed limited edition inkjet print with gold leaf and silkscreen glazes by Sir Peter Blake. This delicate and touching image has been selected by Blake from his collection of Victorian and Edwardian occasion cards. The use of these cards has recurred in his work from 1991’s V is for Valentine to last year’sFaith, Hope and Charity. Their appeal for the artist lies in their heartfelt sentiment as well as the opportunity to show that the manner in which that people expressed love one hundred years ago isn’t so very different from today. The detail and varied texture of the card is showcased by enlarging it (up to 50x its original size); highlighting the intricacy of the paper-cut border and painted petals. Found Art: Yellow Buttons- signed limited edition digital print with silkscreen glazes by Sir Peter Blake. Blake continues to explore the beauty, elegance and simplicity of commercial design in Found Art: Yellow Buttons. This vintage button set from France is presented an object of beauty and interest beyond the brief glance we might give it if we were buying said buttons as a day-to-day domestic purchase. Blake urges us to re-assess the objects and design we see around us, to question the boundaries of what should be considered ‘fine art’. The regular layout of the buttons is reminiscent of the repeated images in Andy Warhol’s pop art prints, highlighting the relentless production of machine-made culture. The use of digital printing enables Blake to capture the texture of each thread binding the button to the card, and he texture of that card. By enlarging this run-of-the-mill object he makes it somehow alien, allowing us to assess it aesthetically rather than practically.
Cannes Statuary by Sir Peter BlakeWe complete our World Tour with Peter Blake with Cannes Statuary. Blake combines the serenity of a sunny evening in Cannes with a bizarre crowd of collaged figures who are appreciating a collection of statuary. We see Blake's joy in playing with perspective, helping to accentuate the surreal nature of the image. The statuary Blake chooses is dominated by ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, whilst the crowd is composed of figures from every conceivable time and location. Perhaps Blake is making a witty play on the idea of people 'posing' on the beach. Certainly the human body as depicted in ancient sculpture has always been considered the height of perfection, something we all strive to achieve when posing in our beachwear!
NEW Dark Side of the Moon 40th Anniversary print by Storm Thorgerson
CCA Galleries is delighted to announce the release of Dark Side of the Moon 40th Anniversary by Storm Thorgerson, In March 1973 one of the most successful albums of all time was released: Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. The artwork for the album became as famous and iconic as the musical content and was designed by Thorgerson who was then part of the graphic art group Hipgnosis. Hipgnosis had designed seven rough concepts for Pink Floyd to choose from; they selected the simple and bold prism design immediately. The refracting glass prism was a reference to the light shows that the band used in their concerts. The prism’s triangular shape is a symbol of ambition and also echoes the shape of a pyramid- touching on themes in the lyrics of the album. For the 40th anniversary Thorgerson has created a limited edition silkscreen print divided into a 7x7 grid of squares. Forty of these squares are variations of the original Dark Side image- displaying an incredible level of imagination, inventiveness and humour from the artist. The remaining squares are filled with individual letters spelling PINK FLOYD. The variations on the prism image reflect many different facets of Thorgerson’s work. Over his career the majority of his album cover artwork has been created using photography rather than computer graphics, painting or drawing. As Thorgerson explains it, ‘I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality…to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not?’ Here the majority of the images are photographic; picture of physical installations that Thorgerson has created using various media including flowers, food, wool, liquid on glass, beads, the human body, buttons, collage etc. Some of the images reference other works by the artist; the prism motif painted onto bodies is redolent of Thorgerson’s Back Catalogue works. Several of the images recreate the prism design in homage to great artists including Dali, Miro, Lichtenstein and Picasso.
Though The Dark Side of the Moon 40th Anniversary is complex and multi-layered, like the original 1973 image it also retains an elegant simplicity in its grid structure. This infinite variety on a single theme is fascinating to examine and is exacerbated by the textural detail also lavished on the piece. Each individual square in the grid has been given it’s own finish which vary from gloss or matt glazing, to embossing, gold leaf and diamond dust.
Paris Parade by Peter BlakeContinuing our exloration of Peter Blake's World Tour, we remain in Paris for Paris- Parade. Paris exudes a certain fascination for Blake, it is a city that he visits in his art again and again.
Here he revisits the place de la concorde at some point in the early 20th century. The Parisian square slumbers gently in the delicate muted tones of the sunset behind it, whilst in the foreground a surreal parade is taking place. Members of the parade incude a knight on horseback, an ancient pontificator and a man travelling in a sedan-style hammock. Blake combines historical and geographically-diverse figures to create an unexpected and comedic composition.
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Posted By Clare on Mon 17 Jun 2013 11:32 
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