Spotlight on Linda Felcey and Julian Le Bas
(above) Linda in her rural studio and (right) Julian in his Brighton studio
Linda Felcey and Julian Le Bas both showed still life paintings in the Spring Show. Part of each artist's practice is to bring nature into the studio for (often) small contemplative paintings. Below, they discuss their approaches.
Linda Felcey: Nature’s Sung Song 25 x 30cm (above) and Blown Away 23 x 44cm (right) both oil on linen
“and earths you here for real”
Julian says of his painting Flowers: ‘It was created as a celebration of the subject matter. Rather than just looking at them, the act of painting these flowers triggered an exploration of their forms to one another. An attempt is made to make the flowers feel tactile and tangible. Perceiving space around and between their forms is a vital process for me when painting still life subjects.
‘In a similar way to how I approach my main subject - the landscape - I work with a sense of urgency and directness. Finding refuge in the still life motif helps me to keep connected to nature when the weather is too dreadful to paint within the landscape. I fully admire the solidity and presence of Cezanne's still life works, and seeing Chardin's Bowl of Strawberries twenty years ago was an incredible experience, they seemed so real !’
Flowers (above ) and Copper Beech (right) by Julian Le Bas
Linda writes of her painting Nature's Sung Song: ‘I often use borrowed words from poetry and prose to work out titles for the paintings. These become important for the final idea of how the works can be perceived and experienced. Natures sung song came from a play on phrases and words gathered, collected, arranged and rearranged. The bowl is from the Sung dynasty, 13th century, around 700 yrs old. The bowl is a simple beautiful form. I played with sung and song - with seeds waiting to be sung, like notes diffusing in a breeze, carried in a song on the meadow.”
"Whilst painting these I became inhabited by the following quote by Edmund de Whaal: 'You can gain the shape of an idea by losing its particulars'. I often aspire to depict a subject showing it out of focus, sometimes blurred and dragged. These gestures aim to suggest movement - time, energy, things dissolving - often striving to reach a sensuous poetic space, a sense of time passing: a gust of wind - a sigh in a breeze...
’I recently came across this line in a poem by Seamus Heaney: ‘and earths you here for real’. The words resonates with how I feel about my work, how I approach it as a whole and my passions for the world. I am informed/inspired by nature and the elements. I am constantly in awe of the everyday: the wind, the rain, the bite of the cold, mist - the list is endless. Taking notice is all I do and it often overwhelms me. I would like to think that my images perhaps encourage the viewer to see more and celebrate, even respect, more of what is around them… from the weed that pushes itself up through a crack in the pavement or rock, to a vast landscape, urban, sea or land.
“Copper Beech was my father’s favourite tree, and this painting came about in honour of him. I collected branches and leaves and became fascinated by the subtle changes of colour within the planes of the leaves.”
