Nothing New

As some wag said: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun..."[Eclesiastes 1:9]

It would make you sick: just when you think you are doing great you turn a corner, go into a gallery, and see that it has all been done before - only better!

I'd been reading about "free abstraction" as done during the 1950's by the English artist Gillian Ayres ["...(her) painting refuses to present an image that might invite pictorial interpretation, or that might propose any analogy beyond that manifest in the energetic distribution of pigmented material across a characterless fabricated surface" (usually hardboard) to quote Mel Gooding in his 2001 biography of GA ]. I decided after reading this that what was required was to cast off inhibition and make my own attempts allowing my subconscious, and brush, free reign.

After a good few, stilted, disasters these three appeared out of the chaos of my mind:

Acrylics on paper, 60x45cm:"Free Abstraction #7";

Acrylics on paper, 60x45cm:"Free Abstraction #8";

And:

Acrylics on paper, 45x60cm:"Free Abstraction #9";

There is no attempt to represent anything. What I am searching for is an expression of something intangible, ungraspable, inexpressable in words. They won't 'mean' anything to anyone else, but they mean something to me and gave me great satisfaction.

Until....

...until I walked into Roger Billcliffe's gallery in Glasgow and was astonished to see these fabulous freely expressed abstractions by Gail Harvey, a Glasgow artist now based in Shetland:

Mixed media on canvas, 177x152cm:"Journey";

Mixed media, 99x69cm:"Blue on the Horizon"

These just blew my socks off! I said to the young guy at the desk "these just look like one of my favourite artists Duncan Shanks, to which he replied - "Aye, she was taught by him!". to which I retorted:"I wish I had been taught by him too!".

Go and have a look at her stuff for yourselves here: http://www.billcliffegallery.com/

I have run out of words (at the moment) to describe just how much I love this stuff!