I
He paints on found domestic objects: worn bread boards, old table tops, disused picture frames. His largest works of art are on sanded plywood panels more than two metres tall and wide. The colours are vivid, intense, sometimes jarring: molten blue, siren red, the neon greens of parakeets and unripe lemons. Emotion made powerfully visible, they claim their own place on the periodic table of the elements.
A lot is missing. There are no drawings or details, no discernible objects, no special effects. We’re left looking at just two things: the surfaces, and the paint. And we’re overwhelmingly aware of the paint: a broad two-colour ribbon six feet long, a thumb-sized glob where the loaded brush scraped against an edge. The marks are lush, swirling, dabbing. In unprimed wood around the brush marks, a post-production halo of oil seeps into the grain.
We’re at Modern Art Oxford. This is Time and Place, a major exhibition of paintings by Sir Howard Hodgkin.
A living British master, he paints feelings that are many times bigger than I am. I can’t stop looking.
II
White Waltham Primary School art workshop
We’re working with thick, velvety paint in large plastic squeeze tubes. Hot pink, sunset orange, fire engine red, chrome yellow, prussian blue. We’ve rolled out oversized sheets of artists’ drawing paper, and in teams we’re using lolly sticks, rollers, sponges and fingers to make marks of all kinds, layer upon layer.
There aren’t many rules. Only that we ask politely if we need more paint, and that in our excitement we try keep our voices down. It’s not easy. Each new mark, each new layer of colour is a fresh discovery. A boy looks up from his work, punches the air and shouts, “This – is passion!”
We’re at White Waltham Primary School. I’m leading a two-day art masterclass with 180 pupils, one class at a time. Like clockwork through the day, each group files into the hall, sits down, and for the next 40 minutes gets to work. As each class leaves, the children’s artwork is laid out to dry on the floor, a spreading lake of colour, vivid, Hodgkinesque.
I can’t stop looking.
III
We’re at an elephant camp in northern Thailand. The animals are on show. They bathe in the river, they haul timber, they kick a football, they pluck proferred bananas from our hands. Finally, they paint. Each tusker stands before an easel, its long grey gooseneck of a trunk curling and uncurling. It grasps a loaded brush and daubs the paper. A picture begins to form. We applaud from the bleachers.
When the show is finished, we queue up to buy. One painting catches my eye: minimalist, an expanse of white that sets off a vivid clot of tempera. I hand over my cash, but before I can stop him the man pulls out a stamp the size of a saucer, inks it up and presses it onto the face of the painting. With a blunt pencil he inscribes the elephant’s name in block letters across the stamp. The ink is still fresh. It smears.
For some people, it isn’t the work of art that counts as much as who has made it.
IV
But making art is not the same as making a career of art.
White Waltham Primary School art workshop
For most of us, it’s just a thing we could always do. You’re a kid, you daydream, you make things up. At first it’s only play, and it’s only for you. Then someone looks or listens, and suddenly you have an audience, and then it starts to be for them, too. And if, at that point, you’re five years old and you’re Howard Hodgkin, you’ve found your passion, and you spend the rest of your life pursuing it.
Some of us take a little longer. I first saw Hodgkin’s work two years ago in the stark, cathedral-like spaces of the Gagosian gallery in London. I was a recent convert to art as a full time career. The bachelor’s degree in fine art had come and gone, and I had moved on to other things. Making art a hobby had made it safe: throw down the brush at any time, walk away, nobody gets hurt. Making it a way of life, however, felt risky. It took years to make the switch.
When at last I did, I became a beginner all over again. And in that first encounter with Hodgkin’s art at the Gagosian, I was stunned to discover that, up until then, I had had no idea what art was really for.
= end =
Cynthia Barlow Marrs
Cynthia Barlow Marrs ASGFA is the resident art correspondent for Beat Magazine.
Cynthia is a British-American artist based in Windsor. She started out with a degree in fine art and worked internationally in environmental planning and business-community programme development before returning to England to stay put and paint. Cynthia is an Associate member of the Society for Graphic Fine Art.
more about Cynthia Barlow Marrs ASGFA can be found here: www.cbarlowmarrs.com
“Begin afresh, afresh, afresh” is the last line of Philip Larkin’s poem The Trees. For Seamus Heaney, Hodgkin’s art is about knowing “how to begin afresh”. Heaney and other writers comment on Hodgkin’s work in Alan Yentob’s 2006 documentary on Sir Howard, “Imagine: A Portrait of the Painter”. It’s on show at Modern Art Oxford during the exhibition, and is available at any time through Hodgkin’s web site.
Time and Place at Modern Art Oxford. A new major exhibition of paintings by Howard Hodgkin over the past ten years. Thanks to popular demand, the exhibition has been extended another week, until 12 September 2010. Free admission. www.modernartoxford.org.uk
Royal Elephants from Mughal India: Paintings & drawings from the collection of Sir Howard Hodgkin at The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford. Until 28 September 2010. Since boyhood, Sir Howard has been a passionate collector of Indian paintings and drawings. He has a particular affinity for elephants. This temporary exhibition shows 20 works of art from his distinguished collection. Free admission. http://www.ashmolean.org
Howard Hodgkin:
The authorized web site: www.howardhodgkin.org.uk
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