Alan Davie, 'Lush Life No 1', oil on canvas, 1961
I travelled to Huddersfield last Sunday
morning, leaving very early, to deliver a painting that I have sold to a friend
and ex-colleague who now lives there. I know Huddersfield and the surrounding
area of Kirklees well, having lived and worked there, and indeed studied there
for my Teaching Diploma, with a teaching placement at Bradford and Ilkley
Further Education College, over 20 years ago. Many of my paintings as a
graduate and post-graduate student were inspired by the nightlife and culture
of this corner of West Yorkshire.
Memories, both good and sometimes very difficult, came flooding back as
I left the M1 and headed across the steeps hills and valleys to the town.
Shaun Morris, 'Spring', oil on canvas, 2008
Anyway, I’m pleased to report that my
friend was delighted with the painting for his very large new house. It was a
painting, ‘Spring’, I had made over 10 years ago and had exhibited at the
college, which is how he remembered it, but I had since taken it off the
stretcher and rolled up to re-use the stretcher for another painting. It was
one of my first attempts at doing something more inspired by the landscape
after 10 years of portrait work, and I always liked it and thought, or hoped,
it might find a home. After getting it re-stretched and touching up some of cracks
that had appeared from it being rolled up, it was nice to see it restored to
life and find a welcome home after all this time. I made the painting during
the months when my brother was dying from cancer, and the piece, as well as
others made during this period, has lots of memories locked into it from this
difficult time. The act of painting itself became really important to me in
helping me process some of the pain from then.
David Hockney, 'We 2 Boys Together Clinging', oil on canvas, 1961
Before heading home again I called in to
Wakefield’s Hepworth Gallery, which incidently is located where I had a studio
during my time there long before the impressive gallery was built. I was keen
to see the exhibition ‘Alan Davie/David Hockney-Early Works’, which was a large
show that exhibited many works by these two painters and printmakers together
in ‘dialogue’. It examined the influence the early abstract works by Davie had
on a young Hockney after the younger artist saw a retrospective of ten years of
Davie’s paintings at Wakefield Art Gallery whilst he was still in Bradford
about to head to the RCA. This experience consequently informed many of the
early more painterly, formal experimental paintings, often incorporating words
or found text, that Hockney made at the RCA, such as ‘We Two Boys Together
Clinging’, which was exhibited here, and with which he began to make his name
in 60’s London.
Alan Davie, 'Creation Of Eve', oil on canvas, 1956
I enjoyed the show a great deal, and
although I admired the clever formal playfulness, and the passionate directness
of his depictions of his homosexual identity, which I’ve always thought were
very brave for the period, it was the sheer visceral energy of Davie’s large
canvasses which really excited me. The spontaneity and improvisations behind
them, influenced by his love of Jazz- Davie was an accomplished Jazz musician-which
were also very phallic and sexual with their painterly ejaculations and erotic
forms, were very powerful. Davie acknowledged the sexual charge behind the
work, and there was a slightly funny film of a very muscular Davie from the
early 60’s stripped to the waist striding over his canvas with large brush and
pot of liquid paint in hand creating one of the paintings in a very
performative way, which made me think about them differently to the usual
‘shamanistic’ quality that is often discussed and associated with his
appearance with his long flowing beard. There was also a photo of him sat
astride a sports car with a glider, two of his many pursuits, behind him, its
wing thrust provocatively into the air behind the artist which made me smile.
Alan Davie in 'action' in the early1960's
Alan Davie, 'Cross For The White Birds', oil on canvas, 1965
On heading back to my car, I realised what
an influence Davie, and other abstract expressionist painters, have had on me,
and the development of my own visual language, which could be seen quite
explicitly in the painting I had delivered earlier. The performative,
spontaneous aspect of painting, attempting things in one go, in the moment, as
well as the gestural language of brush and mark, much more so than Hockney. His work seemed richer in its invention, but not
as exciting in the execution. It’s the surface that excites me more, which is
why I prefer Hockney’s later works, the Yorkshire landscapes, and directly
painted portraits, which I feel have a different kind of a kinship with these paintings by Davie and
his own direct way of painting fifty years later.
David Hockney, 'The Big Hawthorne', oil on canvas, 2008
It was an exciting show. I headed back to
the M1 and hurried back to the studio…
Here a few links about Alan Davie:
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/alan-davie-979/remembering-great-painter-alan-davie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgPmkoAR76U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgPmkoAR76U
