Michelle Doveys Paintings - Essay Example

The painting tradition in the British Isles goes back many centuries. As far back as the 18th and early 19th centuries, John Constable focused on the study of art and created paintings that reflected his love and understanding of nature. It was Constable’s goal to capture the “light – dews – breezes – bloom – and freshness” of the English countryside” (Pandell 1993). Constable did not hew to the academic line and brought a sense of freshness to the paintings that he did. As an Englishman painting the English countryside, Constable falls within the so-called English school of painting, but English painting has not necessarily been restricted to Englishmen painting English subjects. For example, Anthony Van Dyck, a Flemish who studied in Italy became so famous that he was eventually invited by Charles I to become a court painter. Though born in Antwerp, some experts consider him the forerunner of the English school of painting. With this in mind, looking at contemporary painters such as Michelle Dovey, it is a fair question to wonder if Dovey’s paintings fall within the tradition of English painting. This paper considers not only the patterns of Dovey’s paintings but also critically analyzes the painters own thoughts about her paintings. One of the themes that run through Michelle Dovey’s paintings are trees. As curator Alice Correia writes regarding an exhibition of paintings my Dovey in the collection “Wood for the Trees and Falling Leaves,” “Working from eighteenth century paintings by Stubbs and Constable, Michelle Dovey gives prominence to the pictorial components often overlooked in art. Instead of being props or framing devices trees are joyously moved to the centre of her canvases” (“Wood for the Trees and Falling Leaves” www.artshole.co.uk/whats_on/?evt_mode=CM). As noted above, often, rather than painting the landscape or trees directly, Michelle Dovey takes old paintings of trees or the landscape that have been done by other notable painters from the past and reinterprets them. If the paintings that she focuses on have an English origin, would that make her an English painter? And what if, from her base in London, she paints pictures of trees by Chinese landscape painters? Would that make her a Chinese painter? As Michelle Dovey indicated in a letter to this writer, “I don’t really see myself in the tradition of English painting” (Dovey letter 2006). She hails from New Zealand but she was at an early age familiar with David Hockney’s landscape as well as the paintings of Jackson Pollock. Rather than seek to follow in the school of English landscape paintings Dovey sees her art as merely a response to art that touched her. She also finds constant inspiration in the Hampstead Heath area of London where she lives. It seems that too often critics are eager to put an artist in a box. This may be an easy or perhaps a lazy way to review the constant stream of art and paintings that flow into the market place. Without some form of easy categorization critics and even galleries might have to delve deeper into themselves to come up with ways by which they can let the viewing public appreciate the new paintings coming from artists’ brushes. Dovey admits to finding a great deal of inspiration in the light of England, including the “soft, romantic, and lots of grey compared to New Zealand which is very bright, more like L.A.” (Dovey Letter 2006). Traditional English painting, as such, reveal the richness of English and the trees that have been portrayed by such masters as Constable can sometimes be seen at once to symbolize the stability and long history of the British while at the same time revealing the imperfections in English society. Another dichotomy that seems present in English style paintings is that of the juxtaposition of reality against illusion, and underlain by emotion and temperament. Van Dyck notwithstanding, the majority of the paintings that came to be characterized as English painting centered on English people looking at themselves whether in terms of human subjects or in terms of the landscape and places that shaped the temperament of the English. In recent years, the field of painters in England has widened even as England has become a haven for artists from many different backgrounds. At the same time, the ease of travel and mobility has also meant that a painter who resides in the United Kingdom need not necessarily be inspired only by images around him or her. For Dovey, the impressions that the landscape, including the trees and the hills, even the distant horizon, make are very strong. She is drawn in by the power of these powerful elements, blocking out others less forceful in their attraction to her. As she notes, “I went to the Stubbs show at the Royal Academy last year. I felt hugely excited by the backgrounds, something about the quality of light, the trees, and the skies. It wasn’t conscious to leave out the horses; I simply didn’t see them” (Dovey http://www.likeyou.com/archives/michelle_dovey_gimpel_06.htm). From the above quotation it is easy to see how Dovey herself sees her environment, with a keen eye that latches on to the dominant features while blanking out from view those less strong in the impressions they make on her senses. For example, Blossom II, below helps to illustrate some of the passion with which Dovey looks at the objects that she paints: Blossom II Source: www.gimpelfils.com In the above painting the colours are vivid and the tree though perched on a rising slope at the margins of the canvas, re-emerges in full bloom to take up most of the space. There is a spiral quality both to the tree and the surrounding brush. This spiral quality can also be seen in the distant clouds, giving the impression that all nature is intertwined and that there is an element of communication or harmony in all nature. By painting a painting, Dovey clearly brings a remarkable sense of imagination and sensitivity to her work. The tree that Stubbs saw may not be around for Dovey to examine and even if it were, as trees have not been unknown to sometimes live for a long time, the tree would have changed in ways that would not necessarily make it recognizable or comparable to the original Stubbs painting. By re-imagining the tree and highlighting particular elements, whether in terms of the curve of a branch, the density of the grass beneath the tree, or shrubs at a remove from the central object of focus of the painting, Dovey manages to kindle the viewer’s passion for the moment through a connection with the past. Though drawing on the past, Dovey does not make herself a slave to the past. It was indeed Baudelaire who suggested that great works of art ought to be able to recall the memory of their art historical antecedents. If such a recall is total, however, then the contemporary artists may appear to lack imagination, merely coming across as a skilled copyist. Baudelaire further argued “that in order to achieve its own life, the work of art must not be overwhelmed by history but rather activate memory subliminally - drawing on its precedents and transforming them. Dovey's work can be successfully placed within this discourse of artistic memory, being open as she is with the sources of her citations, but achieving a fresh and original approach to familiar scenes. Despite being based on fragments of existing paintings, these are complete works in themselves and Dovey is successful in redirecting our attention to the unnoticed” (Dovey http://www.likeyou.com/archives/michelle_dovey_gimpel_06.htm). The spiral forms that appear in some of Dovey’s paintings such as the one above may also be seen as reflecting the painter’s interest in the subject of growth and decay. Her own painting of the works of such “ancient” painters as Stubbs may be viewed as a sense of renewal. And she sees in the trees that are her subjects an element of both flexibility and stability. “At once static, trees are also malleable; they are simultaneously solid and dense, and light and porous. The trunk of the tree maintains its fixity while its branches allow for change, reacting to the wind, rain and sunlight” (Dovey http://www.likeyou.com/archives/michelle_dovey_gimpel_06.htm). What brings a touch of distinctiveness to Dovey’s work include the way in which she mixes her paints, along of course with her peculiar brush strokes. Through the way in which she combines these two elements she is able to draw the viewer’s attention to those elements that can easily elude someone with an untrained eye for art. The series of paintings known as Tree Dance after Wouverman reveals Dovey’s passion to focus on the beauty and grace of trees. MICHELLE DOVEY Tree dance after Wouverman I MICHELLE DOVEY Tree dance after Wouverman II MICHELLE DOVEY Tree dance Source: www.gimpelfils.com The trees depicted in “Tree Dance” come across as gangly and tall but they also reveal a sense of grace in their movement whether they are twisting in the wind or reaching for the skies. She manages to capture this element of flexibility through the broad brush but loose strokes. The use of other materials as a base also allows the artists to bring a quality of roughness or texture to the painting. This helps to bring out the reality that trees are not always smooth even if they may appear to have smooth dance moves! Dovey calls to mind another painter, David Tress, who also follows the tradition of landscape paintings. The way in which Dovey uses her brush strokes and gives texture to her works is very much similar to that of Tress. Despite the similarities there are also remarkable differences between the styles of these two painters. For example, Dovey’s works come across as being softer in tone, thus bringing calm over the viewer. Tress’s paintings, on the other hand, seem to reach out and grab the viewer by the throat. One might look at a Tress painting with a sense of foreboding whereas one is more apt to relax in the presence of a Dovey painting. Considering that Dovey’s paintings often are reflections of the English landscape through a second hand look it would probably be unfair to pigeonhole Dovey as an English painter, which is not to say that such a depiction is a negative characterization. It may be better to say that Dovey is one of those rare painters who is able to connect the viewer with the past and to allow her paintings to caress the viewer, lulling him or her into a mild state of hypnotic trance. And such a painter, even if not an English one, could not be considered half bad. Bibliography Dovey, Michelle. Painter’s Works. www.gimpelfils.com (January 16, 2007) Russell, Stella Pandell. Art in the World, United Kingdom: Wadsworth, 1993. Van Dyck, Anthony. http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=453&page=1 (January 16, 2007). “Wood for the Trees and Falling Leaves.” www.artshole.co.uk/whats_on/?evt_mode=CM (January 16, 2007) Read More