With thanks to Carole and Arts Alive Wales for the facilities.
PatrickPhotos
A personal photography project
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Through another one of the wonders of the Internet, it was drawn to my attention that the 2012 BP Portrait Award winner Aleah Chapin is having a show in London at Flowers Cork Street Gallery.
Having the ability to view Chapin’s work as the artist intended is very different from looking at her work in a publication or online. The sheer physical size of her work can really only be appreciated in person. It really isn’t the same peering at her work on a tiny screen or page in a book.
Called “Maiden, Mother, Child & Crone”, the six works on show work well together as a timeline to the life cycle – childbirth to childhood to old age. But each piece also stands up just as well on its own. Sophisticated, tender and beautiful are all words that can easily be used to describe these works. Stunning is the only way I can describe them.
There isn’t long if you do want to see them. The show ends on 8 November 2014.
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To promote the exhibition Rembrandt: The Late Works at the National Gallery, BBC2 broadcast the programme Rankin Shoots Rembrandt last Friday in which the photographer recreates the painter’s work.
In the programme, Rankin describes the level of detail in Rembrandt’s work – detail which some artists would airbrush out to flatter the sitter. In fact, the lines and the “imperfections” make a much more interesting portrait.
Photography taking inspiration from great works of art is nothing new for the National Gallery. One of their previous exhibitions and the accompanying catalogue Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present by Hope Kingsley, compares photographs taken by well known photographers to the art that may have influenced them.
What strikes me about the difference between the photographer and the painter is the amount of time each can observe a subject to create a work. It can take hours or days of studying for a painter to go from a blank canvas to the finished piece. As a photographer, it is a luxury that I can only dream about.
Rembrandt: The Late Works is on at the National Gallery until 18 January 2015.
