Gerry Halpin MBE PPMAFA NAPA
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
It was said that the invention of photography would herald the end of painting, but no, it was embraced by artists as a means of exploring the world and of seeing it differently. Indeed it became, and still is, a highly respected art form in its own right.
Technology can inform artists and when used as a means of finding pathways to express a personal response through ones chosen medium, then technology can be the catalyst to new ways of seeing.
My own painting has benefited from technological innovation and has given me an opportunity to examine and paint the landscape from an altogether different perspective than that of looking from the more familiar ground level position.
After flying off on holiday, I began to recognise the possibilities of recording what I could see of the world below me, of the marvellous interactions that could be observed of various geographical features, some natural and others reshaped by the demands of civilisations, past and present.
The late Peggy Guggenheim in her autobiography, ‘OUT OF THIS CENTURY’, made the observation when flying back from San Francisco that “the landscape below was amazing, better than any painting”.
Those same images excited me on a similar flight and I began to draw what I could see below from subsequent holiday flights and also more locally, flying in a light aircraft piloted by a friend.
The speed of travel necessitated that the drawing was a shorthand sketch of what I saw below and that the simplification of response was of great importance to my practise. ‘Impressions’ were taken which freed me up to re-present those images without the need to account for accurate topographical detail. That freedom to interpret, the opportunity to make a personal response to what I saw, was the difference between ‘painting’ and being trapped into merely re-stating the inevitable ‘pattern’ reality of the landscape as it often appears when viewed from an aerial perspective. William Scott, Victor Pasmore, Roger Hilton and Patrick Heron in the late 60’s similarly realised that they could be free of being tied to reality by allowing feeling and sentiment and sensitivity to be a part of their examination and interpretation of that reality. The notion of abstracting from reality pushed their painting in a new direction and became highly influential in British art as did the Abstract Expressionists movement in America at the same time.
It is the process of painting which excites me and the initial drawing from the subject, which is fundamental to my art, provides the reality which is critical to the integrity of my paintings.
Although the landscape seen from above appears to be two dimensional, I needed to respond to its three dimensional truth and this required thought on the manner of painting. Applying the paint with texture was the key.
Initially I used acrylic paint, adding polymer texture paste to the paint and sometimes Liquitex modelling paste direct to the canvas prior to painting. Now I also work with oil paint, applied with a palette knife in quite thick passages, overlaid on the initial thin underpainting .
Inspiration comes primarily from coastal landscapes, where the sea either dramatically crashes onto the rocky shores or gently ebbs away over sand. Evidence of the intrusion of human habitation on the landscape often adds hard edge shapes to an otherwise gentler blend of forms. Colour can be tonally subtle or richly dense where the aerial view appears to compact the flattened image.
Natural and man-made marks in the landscape are also essential elements in my paintings, a kind of personal iconography created by gouging into the wet paint, adding further to the notion of contour and a more interpretive re-presentation of physical reality.
Adding a relatively unique contribution to the genre of landscape painting is both a joy and a privilege and I acknowledge the place of modern technology in affording me, as it now does, various means of observing the world from above, allowing me to create paintings which are a personal response to what I see .
Painting every day in my studio is an absolute delight, an opportunity to express creatively, almost abstractly, the wonderment that I see in this particular aspect of our world, images of which, photographically at least, are becoming more familiar to us through their appearance in today’s media.
This interpretive approach I also apply to figures in paintings, observing people as they move away, or sometimes to be viewed from above, whilst they are occupied in ‘looking’ in art galleries, or moving about in railway stations and airports. I’m fascinated by the spatial relationship between groups of figures, their posture and the colour they bring and also the story which is implied but is never known, of their personal relationship one to another..if there might be such.
It is for the observer of the finished painting to ponder on that enigma and to suggest the story as they might see it.
I find that the unplanned, random groupings presented by these figures, where they are the main and not an incidental part of the final painting, provides another creatively exciting element to my re-presentation of the observed world. The manner of painting figures is not dissimilar to my landscape paintings using thickened acrylic or very juicy oils applied with a palette knife.
These two major areas of interest are representative of my art today.
EXHIBITIONS
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF OIL PAINTERS MALL GALLERY LONDON, ANNUALLY SINCE 2013
WINNER OF THE MENENA JOY SCHWABE MEMORIAL AWARD FOR AN OUTSTANDING ARTIST ROI 2014
ROYAL SOCIETY OF MARINE ARTISTS, MALL GALLERY LONDON
ROYAL SOCIETY OF WATERCOLOUR PAINTERS, MALL GALLERY LONDON
BLACKBURN CITY ART GALLERY (PAINTING PURCHASED FOR THEIR PERMANENT COLLECTION)
STOCKPORT WAR MEMORIAL ART GALLERY
THE STATION GALLERY RICHMOND NORTH YORKSHIRE
THE PORTICO LIBRARY AND GALLERY MANCHESTER
BURY ART GALLERY
THE CHAPEL GALLERY ORMSKIRK LANCASHIRE (WEST LANCASHIRE OPEN EXHIBITION-FREQUENTLY SHOWN AND HIGHLY COMMENDED)
GALLERY OLDHAM
DEAN CLOUGH GALLERY HALIFAX
THE ATKINSON GALLERY SOUTHPORT
APPOINTED MBE NEW YEAR HONOURS LIST 2009 FOR SERVICES TO THE ARTS AND CHARITY, PRESENTED BY H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH II MARCH 2009
PRESIDENT OF MANCHESTER ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 2015 -19
REPRESENTED BY
SAUL HAY FINE ART GALLERY MANCHESTER
GALLERY EAST WOODBRIDGE SUFFOLK
TALLANTYRE GALLERY MORPETH NORTHUMBERLAND
NEW ART ON-LINE GALLERY
COURTNEY GALLERY ASHBOURNE DERBYSHIRE
