A challenge that I set myself during this time of lockdown was to spend 15 minutes per day exploring an artists work. Whilst doing this I would write up a few notes on what I liked or disliked about their work. The aim initially was for this to be a daily exercise. I haven’t quite kept to this but in the nineteen days since I started this initiative I have notes on eleven artists. On some of the intervening days I will have been carrying out course research.

The aim of this challenge was to make looking at other artists work part of my daily routine. The benefit that I expect to gain from this is an exposure to different painting styles, techniques and subjects. I certainly do not expect to like them all and will mention this in my notes. Whilst I’m completing this course I will write up my notes, along with examples of the paintings, in the Exhibition section of my blog. I will limit each blog to ten artists to prevent any blog from becoming too long.

My source for the first group of artists is a website Contemporary British Paintings, http://www.contemporarybritishpainting.com. This website was part of the suggested reading / viewing from Part Two feedback. The site currently lists the work of 71 artists. Each artist has a short artist’s statement and a selection of their work, normally about six paintings. I shall work through these alphabetically.

1. David Ainley – (29/4/2020) minimalist art exploring mined and quarried places reflecting the act of human labour on the landscape. I found his paintings challenging in that they didn’t have much in them, minimalist. However what they did have was very carefully observed and put together.

2. Ian Andrews – (30/4/2020), an art phycologist! his paintings were fantasy paintings which play with links to old masters and art history. He uses thick paint, suggested shapes and human forms to depict surreal, slightly grotesque folk tales. I detected a Dali infuence to some of the paintings.

3. Amanda Ansell – (1/5/2020), abstract expressionism. I have observed similar paintings, with gestural movements, to these and have tried to emulate this type of painting in my own work.

4. Karl Bielik – (2/5/2020), experimental, abstract expressionist artist who works on up to 30 paintings at once and lets them slowly emerge from the physical process of painting. Sometimes leaving them for weeks or months before completing them.

5. Claudia Bose – (3/5/2020),a passion for history and art made by women. She works in a church tower in Suffolk. Her art is predominately abstract pieces made using oil, watercolour and mixed media. The paintings are expressionistic and gestural with the material being applied liberally. They include signs of scratching and removal of paint. Also the paint is allowed to run. The colour palettes are minimal within each painting, probably 6-7 colours maximum usually less. I feel that this gives the paintings a cohesion. Sizes are not large 90x90cm the largest and 14x13cm the smallest in the selection that I observed. I downloaded a painting called “Staying Alive” as its title resonated with me during these lockdown times.

6. Day Bowman – (4-5-2020), her paintings are large scale canvases which try to echo the marks, lines and shapes made in the wet, grey sand of her hometown beach. working on multiple canvases at the same time using random mark making, gesture and colours in both controlled and random manner to echo light, tides and movement. Limited palette of colours, whites, greys and yellow ochre and occasional blue with charcoal. I enjoyed these paintings.

7. Julian Brown – (7/5/2020), Influenced by the folk art from his Polish mother and heavily influenced by nostalgic visions of the 1980’s. Handmade geometric quality with a playful primitive relevance to the world that we now live in. I downloaded two paintings the second of which I will try to make my version of.

8. Simon Burton – (9-5-2020), these was no link to this artist’s statement or other paintings.

9. Marco Cali – (11-5-2020), his paintings focus on figurative subjects influenced by renaissance and surreal traditions. The paintings I observed were mainly torsos and where the was heads the facial features were omitted. Mostly oil on paper or oil on canvas.

10, Ruth Calland – (13/5/2020), gestural and visceral paintings that look to explore emotional experience. To me they are highly coloured, non pictorial but gestural captures of mood and form. The painting technique is crude-ish with colours being mixed on the canvas. Two examples below.

• Exhibitions