Tag: Contemporary Sussex Artists

John Hitchens’ Art at Weald & Downland Museum

John Hitchens, Three Burnt Fields and Limed Land

As I drive towards the Weald & Downland Museum the road along the ridge of the South Downs through the Goodwood estate affords an aerial view of the Sussex landscape reminiscent of one of John Hitchen’s landscapes. His latest exhibition Wood, Sand and Stone is currently on show in the museum’s 17th century Longport Gallery.

This is the first exhibition by Sussex artist, John Hitchens, to explore his paintings based solely on natural materials and their interactions between space, form and nature. It includes visually stunning 360 degree landscapes Painted Wooden Uprights painted in an earthy palette.

It further presents a selection of new paintings on stones, and earlier works using layers of locally sourced sand. All these works use the natural materials available to the artist around his Sussex home.

The natural materials of the intimate 17th century oak framed Longport Gallery work in concert with the natural materials out of which the works on display are born. Many of these three dimensional paintings combine the abstract with the naturalistic. There is something of the ancient in their expression of the Sussex landscape and they are curated in an imaginative way, displayed in old museum cabinets like a series of revered archaeological finds.

John Hitchens, Painted Wooden Uprights at the Weald & Downland Museum

John Hitchens’ paintings are concerned with the patterns and rhythms of the landscape.

Aerial photography over the South Downs and a love of maps with their contours have provided inspiration for his increasingly abstract landscapes over the last twenty years. Take Three Burnt Fields and Limed Land painted in 2003. Its forms are reduced to a series of lines, dots, circles and patterns which provide motifs for the shapes created by ploughing and harvesting. Stubble was the origin of the dots and the black areas in the compositions recall burnt stubble, a sight no longer part of our landscape. Many of the works are textural, the earth hues painted on a base of sieved sawdust bound together with PVA. As you stop and stare subtle details reveal themselves. They reflect our human relationship with the land and our influence on the landscape.

The forms relate to one another in the method of their execution, bringing together the artists’ close observation of the natural world, collected objects, and an appreciation of traditional materials and craftsmanship.

John Hitchens is one of our nation’s leading landscape artists. Don’t miss Wood, Sand and Stone at the wonderful Weald & Downland Museum. To find out more visit www.wealddown.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions.

The Important Sussex Artist, Fred Cuming

Fred Cuming – ‘Roses I’, 20th century oil on canvas laid onto board, signed recto © the artist/Toovey’s 2023

The artist Fred Cuming, RA, is considered to be one of the finest landscape painters of his generation. He lived and worked in East Sussex.

Born in 1930 Cuming attended the Sidcup School of art in the years after the war. Between 1951 and 1955 Cuming studied at the Royal College of Art in London gaining a Rome Scholarship. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1974 (ARA 1969). He was also a Member of the New English Art Club and an Associate of the Royal College of Art.

Writing about Fred Cuming the biographer Richard Holmes describes him as ‘A truly visionary painter.’ Cuming conveys recognisable scenes transforming them with a poetic intensity born out of light and colour.

Fred Cuming gives voice to his life and inspiration as an artist in the insightful short film Portrait of an artist (Fred Cuming) commissioned by the Royal Academy in 2015.

He describes how he grew up in Woolwich fascinated by the boats and water, painting even as a young boy.

In his Sussex studio he worked on numerous paintings at the same time, each informing the other as they develop. Form and structure in the scene becomes apparent as he commits the scene to paper.

Two oils by this important artist, entered from a collection in Horsham, sold in Toovey’s recent fine art sale for £2200 and £3600 respectively.

Fred Cuming – Fowey, Square Rigger’, 20th century oil on board, signed recto © the artist/Toovey’s 2023

The scene, ‘Fowey, Square Rigger’, shimmers in the Cornish sunlight, the brilliant palette adding life and movement to the scene which is recognisable and abstract – a fleeting moment in time. Cuming has in the past reflected that the “problem presented by the simple seascape, which is about nothing more than light and space, I find particularly intriguing.” This scene is one which I am particularly fond of as we used to holiday at Polruan on the other side of the Fowey estuary when our children were young.

The cool morning light in the studio is finely captured in the still life ‘Roses I’ – the delicate brush work and palette transcends our immediate perceptions. Fred Cuming’s painting captures our attention and stills us.

This questioning artist’s excitement in the world and the landscapes he painted remained undiminished. Cuming reflected “…the more I discover the more there is to discover.”

To discover more about this important Sussex artist visit www.fredcuming.com.

Fred Cuming, A Poet in the Landscape

Fred Cuming – ‘Evening Walkers, Camber’, 20th century oil on board, signed recto © the artist/Toovey’s 2020

The artist Fred Cuming, RA, is considered to be one of the finest landscape painters of his generation. He lives and works in East Sussex.

Born in 1930 Cuming studied at the Sidcup School of art in the years after the war. Between 1951 and 1955 Cuming studied at the Royal College of Art in London gaining a Rome Scholarship. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1974 (ARA 1969). He is also a Member of the New English Art Club and an Associate of the Royal College of Art.

Writing about Fred Cuming the biographer Richard Holmes describes him as ‘A truly visionary painter.’ Cuming conveys recognisable scenes transforming them with a poetic intensity born out of light and colour.

Fred Cuming gives voice to his life and inspiration as an artist in the insightful short film Portrait of an artist (Fred Cuming) commissioned by the Royal Academy in 2015.

He describes how he grew up in Woolwich fascinated by the boats and water, painting even as a young boy.

In his Sussex studio he works on numerous paintings at the same time each informing the other as they develop. Form and structure in the scene becomes apparent as he commits the scene to paper.

In the film Cuming reflects how “Camber Sands on the coast beyond Rye is one of my favourite locations. In the summer the beach can be crowded with holiday makers. On other days I might be the only person in miles of open space…living by Camber Sands as I do now I’m confronted by nature’s thousand different aspects and moods. The problem presented by the simple seascape, which is about nothing more than light and space, I find particularly intriguing.”

His oil on board ‘Evening Walkers, Camber’ is a beautiful impression of the experience of people gathered in the landscape, the cool water and sand upon their feet, conversations carried on a gentle breeze, the sense of freedom in the horizon where the sky meets the sea. The scene is recognisable and abstract, a fleeting moment in time.

Fred Cuming – ‘Morning Glory’, 20th century oil on canvas laid onto board, signed recto © the artist/Toovey’s 2018

The cool morning light in the studio is finely captured in ‘Morning Glory’ – the delicate brush work and palette transcends our immediate perceptions. Fred Cuming’s painting stills us, demands our attention, and allows our imaginations to inhabit this precious moment in time.

This questioning artist’s excitement in the world and the landscapes he paints remains undiminished. Cuming reflects “…the more I discover the more there is to discover.”

To discover more about this important Sussex artist visit www.fredcuming.com.

John Hitchens – Aspects of Landscape

Artist John Hitchens in his Sussex studio © Anne-Katrin Purkiss

Nothing can prepare you for the scale, drama and beauty of John Hitchens’ work in the opening rooms of this important retrospective exhibition Aspects of Landscape at Southampton City Art Gallery.

Born in 1940 John Hitchens has spent most of his life living in the Sussex landscape which continues to inspire him. The retrospective coincides with the artist’s 80th birthday.

The exhibition begins in an intimate room displaying painted stones and sculpture. It adds to the sense of drama as you enter the first of the main galleries. Seven paintings of extraordinary scale explore the landscape one informing the other. A clump of naturalistic, abstract, hewn vertical landscapes create a layered perspective uniting the works and gifting the viewer with a sense of inhabiting, of being present in a landscape.

The views from Duncton Hill, a period of aerial photography over the South Downs and a love of maps with their contours were the catalysts for these increasingly abstract landscapes from the last twenty years. Forms are reduced to a series of lines, dots, circles and patterns which provide motifs for the shapes created by ploughing and harvesting. Stubble was the origin of the dots and the black areas in the compositions recall burnt stubble, a sight no longer part of our landscape. Many of the pictures are textural, the earth hues painted on a base of sieved sawdust bound together with PVA. As you stop and stare subtle details reveal themselves. They reflect our human relationship with the land and our influence on the landscape.

The chronology of this beautiful and imaginative show works in reverse. We progress back through the years discovering each phase of this important artist’s oeuvre until we arrive at the beginning and his more representational paintings. Throughout his career John has often renewed his exploration in art by putting to one side those things which have been central to his work, brushwork, the relationship of the sky to the land, in order to develop and evolve his artistic voice and creativity. Although these points of decisive change can appear revolutionary this is a processional artist whose art remains about the landscape he is rooted in.

His early work was painted en plein air but today John works in his studio giving voice to the unspoken conversations between found objects, nature, the landscape and music in his art.

John Hitchens has described how, in order to move forward, he got rid of the skyline by ‘tipping the land up’.

John Hitchens’ prodigious creativity is born out of a generous discipline of ‘looking quietly’. He describes painting as a ‘calling’. His artistic practice is driven by both curiosity and delight in the familiar woods, fields, coast and Downs of Sussex. His life and art lend credence to the truth that you can journey far by remaining in the same place.

Our thanks must go to the artist John Hitchens and Dan Matthews, together with his team at Southampton City Art Gallery, for this exceptional show.
Rarely has a body of art, an exhibition, moved me so deeply.

John Hitchens – Aspects of Landscape is this summer’s must see show and has been extended until 3rd October 2020. To find out more and to book your free tickets visit www.southamptoncityartgallery.com.

Sussex Artist Alison Milner-Gulland – A Life in Art

The artist Alison Milner-Gulland in her studio

A retrospective exhibition ‘Alison Milner-Gulland – A Life in Art’ opens at the Horsham Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 7th March 2020. This gifted Sussex artist has been reflecting on her creative life as her 80th birthday approaches.
Alison Milner-Gulland, like the seasons of the year, returns to a cycle of subjects that have always inspired her: the ancient, Sussex and the Downs, iconography, Russia and the Middle East, Oxford, antiquity and the human form, and music. As this retrospective exhibition illustrates one informs the other.

Alison Milner-Gulland’s oil painting, ‘Buddington Bottom’

These subjects directly record the artist’s life and her experience of the world. Alison will often re-visit a piece and re-work it many times reflecting the layers she perceives as she interprets the world around her. Alison’s work is not linear, she zig zags about so the date of a piece is not always relevant or remembered, her pictures develop and evolve as she continues to work on them giving expression to her connectedness with the world she inhabits.

For more than a decade my brother, Nick, and I have visited Alison at her studio which nestles at the foot of the South Downs. Nick describes it as “An amazing space – well-organized chaos, framed works are hung wherever wall-space permits or stacked on the floor. After being greeted by the family’s Jack Russell terrier, Dotty, and navigating a maze of pictures, mounting materials and packaging you come to the main work area of the cottage studio. Here an architect’s chest conceals numerous unframed prints, stacked on top of these are further prints, oils on canvas and works in progress beneath works drying on a washing line. Occasionally the sound of her nearby chickens, geese, guinea fowl or sheep are heard from outside. Negotiating the livestock and braving the elements you come to a separate studio dedicated to Alison’s work in ceramics. A colder but brighter and neater space, inherently slightly dusty from the powders, glazes and clays used to create the work. Along two walls are shelves displaying recent vessels, mostly figurative or musically inspired, but with a few trial abstracted landscape designs scattered amongst them.”

Alison Milner-Gulland’s ceramic pot, ‘Galloping Horses’

Alison has been drawing since she was old enough to hold a pencil.
From her teens until only a few years ago Alison regularly rode in the South Downs committing to memory the play of light and the elements on the landscape bound up with the movement of her horse. The elevated perspective that riding affords is evident in many of her landscapes. Alison has often remarked how in her imagination the rhythm of the horse combines with the movement in the landscape, a theme which recurs in her work.

The exhibition is brought alive through Alison’s comments – reminiscences which inform and accompany the works on display.

At first glance Alison’s work is accessible and uncomplicated, but over time the work reveals layers, subtle details and evolving depths, a spirituality, all of which serve the talent of this gifted artist.

Each of the works reflect the layered rhythm of this artist’s life. Her practice is reflective and always layered. This visual-poet in the landscape allows us to glimpse our place in the procession of human history, and something beyond our immediate perception of the world.

It is these qualities which gift Alison Milner-Gulland’s work with such a particular and distinctive artistic voice.

Alison Milner- Gulland – a Life in Art opens on the 7th March and runs until 27th June 2020 at Horsham District Council’s Horsham Museum & Art Gallery. This is an exceptional exhibition and entry is free. To find out more visit www.horshammuseum.org.