Dream Art Destinations

Me and Water Lilies by Claude Monet at Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2017

This week on Instagram, Kate Bryan the art historian and judge on Portrait Artist of the Year gave a round up of her five dream art destinations, places she would transport herself to if she could to visit notable art works. It got me thinking about where my dream art destinations would be. Where in the world would I transport myself to if money were no object, covid-19 were not in existence and I had no responsibilities at home?

1. Monet’s Water Lily triptych in MoMA, New York. The one that started it all. I’ve spoken about this painting before, many times in fact. I first saw the painting on an A-Level college trip in 2005. I was taking Ceramics and Photography AS-Levels at the time and thought I might do photography at university because although I wasn’t particularly good at photography I really enjoyed it and liked the processes involved. It was a short trip and my first time going to the United States. We crammed a lot of art in to the time, visits to multiple Chelsea galleries, the Met and Whitney. What stuck with me most and set me off on a different path was the Monet in the MoMA. I’d never seen an impressionist painting as big before. The dreamy colours, the brush strokes. It pulled me in and mesmerised me. I’ve been back to see it twice since then, each time sitting with it for ages, hypnotised. I would book a plane ticket to New York just to sit in front of it again.

2. Monet at Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. Following on from the Monet at the MoMA, a gallery that I would love to see inside is Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Home to eight of Monet’s huge water lily landscape paintings, hung one after another in two oval shaped rooms so that the viewer is completely surrounded by beautiful compositions inspired by Monet’s garden in Giverny. I visited Paris on my art and design foundation year but wasn’t able to see inside l’Orangerie or Le Museé d’Orsay which is one of my regrets, within reach but just missed due to a tight schedule.

3. Tracey Emin and Egon Schiele at The Leopold, Vienna. One I’d need a time machine for would be ‘Where I Want To Go’ which took place in the summer of 2015 at The Leopold in Vienna. I’ve been extremely fortunate in that I have visited The Leopold before and I have seen Schiele’s incredible work close up. To see his intimate drawings alongside Tracey Emin’s work would be wonderful. I’ve seen Emin’s work in various places, at several Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and at her solo show ‘The Last Great Adventure Is You’ at White Cube Gallery. Emin draws inspiration from her personal experiences, themes of love and loss. Her ways of working span painting and drawing, neon, sculpture, writing - as the saying goes ‘a jack of all trades’ - I’d go so far as saying she’s a master of them too. There are parallels in Emin and Schiele’s work which would be fascinating to witness in person.

4. Michelangelo at The Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. This one is lifted directly from Kate’s list because the more she spoke about it the more bereft I felt for not seeing it. I find it quite inconceivable that Michelangelo was able to produce such an incredible piece of work, quite frankly the scale and detail blows my mind and I haven’t even seen it in person. My art history knowledge is quite lacking really. Despite having Fine Art BA and MA degrees I have trouble retaining art history knowledge especially if it’s pre-19th century. I feel like seeing the Sistine Chapel would ignite a passion for art of the Renaissance period. Aside from seeing The Sistine Chapel I would also just love to visit Rome as I have never been and it does feel strange to have visited so many places on my travels but to have not been somewhere so culturally significant.

5. Cy Twombly at Tate Modern. Again I’d have to jump into a time machine for this one but I really wish I could have seen the Cycles and Seasons exhibition by Cy Twombly at Tate Modern in the summer of 2008. I have the catalogue which I picked up from Waterstones one day when I was fairly unfamiliar with Twombly’s work. The photographs of the expressive and scratchy paintings inside the book really spoke to me and I’ve had a passion for his work ever since. I have seen Twombly’s work in person before but I would love to see a whole collection of his work in one space so that I might be completely absorbed by it, with eyes tracing the deep lines scratched into the surface, trying to make out the writing scrawl.

So, there are five places that I would love to go to see beautiful art. Of course there are countless more museums that I’d love to revisit or see for the first time and I hope one day I will get to go. Alongside a regular ‘bucket list’ I have an art ‘bucket list’ and I feel extremely fortunate in that many places I have already been to (mostly on college and university art trips). The more art you see in person the more your life is enriched in my opinion. Where would you love to go to or revisit to see art?

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Watercolours in Miniature

Argentina in Colour X, 6cm x 8cm, watercolour on Khadi paper

Some time ago I’d began to realise just how stuck I felt. I’d been making detailed drawings in pen alongside small sketches of birds and botanicals for some years and was starting to find myself feeling like I was going through the motions. My woodland studies project where I drew in fineliner pen a series of British woodland landscapes had been my primary focus for a long time. It’s a project that I enjoyed doing very much and am very proud of too. There are 19 drawings in the collection and as I’m a lover of round numbers I will likely do one more to make a series of 20 but for the time being I wanted to challenge myself by doing something different, so that when I draw in fineliner pen again it doesn’t feel like a chore. I longed for a new project to get my teeth in to. It had been many years since I’d worked with paint and with colour and so I decided that I’d like to go in a new direction, putting colour at the centre of my work for a while.

I ordered a stack of tiny handmade papers by Khadi papers in order to be able to experiment with watercolour paint. Working on a very small scale comes more naturally to me and is less daunting when working with a new and unfamiliar medium. I found a photograph from my travels around Argentina to work from, a beautifully atmospheric landscape of forest in the Nahuel Huapi National Park, Patagonia. I started by putting a wash of colour over the paper, allowing it to dry and then putting down another wash, layering up the paint and also using water and kitchen towel to dab away at the colour too. I used the finest brush I had to paint some tree trunks and branches but found it frustrating how I couldn’t get the tiny details that I’m used to putting in my work. I enjoyed the finished paintings which I stuck in my sketchbook alongside a pencil sketch of the composition. I started another four paintings, working on them simultaneously. The paintings came out quite saturated in colour, I enjoyed aspects of the vibrancy but wanted to try and mute the colours a little to echo colours that are found in impressionist paintings. I borrowed a very fine brush from my partner, one intended to use for painting miniature figurines. The brush felt revolutionary, I was able to create very tiny details on the paper.

Rather than spend a lot of time looking through all my photographs for references I decided to make ten paintings from one photograph focusing on different elements like composition and colour and trying different techniques like layering up wet paint and using more of a dry brush technique. By working in this way I found that I could work faster and experiment more freely, allowing a very different outcome each time despite the exact same photograph being used for reference. I shared the paintings on social media and put them up for sale as part of the Artist Support Pledge. Artist Support Pledge is an initiative conceived by Matthew Burrows where artists put their work for sale for no more than £200 each, when the artist makes £1000 they pledge to but the work of another artist taking part, spending £200 on their work. I was overwhelmed by the positive response and the sales of the miniature paintings and could see how much my work had improved in a short time.

I finished the first series of ten and turned my attention to another composition, one of a landscape in Tosh, India. Again I worked on several paintings at once, capturing different aspects and trying out different techniques. The more ‘open’ landscape was more challenging, it made me realise why I’m so drawn to forests and enclosed woodland spaces, they feel more magical and demand more detail. I’m now working on the third series of paintings which are inspired by a landscape at Iguazu Falls in Argentina. The paintings have taught me so much and feel like a relief as they are so different to my usual work. Hopefully they still capture what it is that I’m hoping all of my work does, an impression of a place with emphasis on light and the magical qualities of the natural world.

Have you changed direction drastically within your work? If you have how do you feel about it? Has it taught you anything?

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Bye Bye Blackbird

Bye Bye Blackbird, 21cm x 29.5cm, pencil on paper by Claire Leach

Out of five little sketches of birds that I made in my sketchbook, I found myself being drawn to the last one on the page, the blackbird. The quick 20 minute drawing seemed to capture the shimmer of the feathers, how the little bird seemed to stand proudly. I decided to make a drawing with three blackbirds on to capture a few different views of the bird. I like the idea of making slightly larger drawings with several birds on rather than the small singular portraits of birds that I have been doing for years. I am also intrigued by the idea of landscapes with birds in them, perhaps a little abstract. Since working in my sketchbook I have all these ideas that I want to pursue which was exactly my hope when I started it, now I just need to find a little more time.

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