Alan Davie comes to Hertford

Work displayed in subway under A414

The A414 cuts a brutal swathe through our county town. It has however given Hertford the unexpected benefit of no less than five subway art galleries.

Three of the subways display enlarged facsimiles of pictures from our local schools. They are delightful. The fourth subway - at the bottom of Queens Road - has a collection of photographs of the town’s landmarks.

The fifth subway - the one that links St Andrews Street with the Aldi supermarket - is perhaps the most interesting. Along one side is a display of paintings by local amateur artists, changed annually but currently including work by luminaries of the Hertford Art Society – Ray Ward, Angela Long, Dianne Warburton, Geoff Bennett.

The opposite side of the subway is much more interesting: 12 Images by Alan Davie, arguably the town’s most recognised past artist (‘past’ to avoid any argument with Hertford’s other special artist, Trevor Chamberlain, still painting away at age 90).

Alan Davie was born in Scotland but he lived the majority of his life - 60 years - in Hertford, right up to his death in 2014. It was in his Rush Green studio that he painted his greatest works - large exotic pictures that hang in world class galleries – the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice, Tate Britain in London and the National Gallery of Scotland.

Davie’s first solo exhibition was at the more humble Wakefield Gallery, in 1958. It was here that a young David Hockney encountered Davie’s work and as a result radically changed direction, discarding, as Davie had, realist figurative painting in favour of colourful works that combined abstraction with coded text and symbolism.

Probably the biggest influences on Alan Davie were Joan Miró and Jackson Pollock. Like Miró Davie attempted to paint as automatically as possible, to tap into his unconscious mind. He stressed the importance of improvisation as his chosen method. Like Pollock Davie executed many of his works by standing above the painting and adding layers of paint until sometimes the original painting had been covered over many times. Despite the speed at which he worked (he usually had several paintings on the go at once) he was adamant that his images were not pure abstraction, but all had significance as symbols.

How well Davie balances abstraction and reality you can judge for yourself with a visit to the St Andrews underpass in Hertford. Treat yourself to a completely free exhibition of pictures by a world class artist. The images you will see are stunning; they deserve to be released from their subterranean prison, to bask in the full light of day.

And to get the full briefing on Alan Davie come along to the first Tuesday of the HAS Winter Programme, on September 3rd. Mik Wilkojc, a trustee of the Hertford Arts Hub, will be giving a comprehensive presentation on the artist. Mik has produced and presented a Youtube video on Alan Davie for the Hertford Arts Hub which he will include in his talk. The video provides a rare opportunity to hear the artist’s own voice.

Highlights of the Summer Season 2024

Despite some tricky weather the 2024 Summer Programme was very enjoyable with a wide variety of venues – villages, towns and countryside – presenting great opportunities for sketching and painting.

  
Left: by Elena Russu. Right: Essendon, early evening by John Jarratt.

In July there was an afternoon visit to Paradise Wildlife Park, now re-branded as Hertfordshire Zoo. Ten Members turned up for the challenge.

Wildlife has to be the most difficult subject to paint: either the animals are hidden, or too far away, or they are asleep, or they are constantly moving, and anyway they invariably merge into the background with effective camouflage. Members struggled heroically against the odds and produced some exciting images. A special award to Marianne Dorn who produced more pictures than the rest of us put together.

As their website points out, this was a ‘unique opportunity to get close and personal with wild animals including lions, tigers, snow leopards, and zebras.’

On a fabulously warm and sunny evening to round off the season a group of members met in a beautiful garden. The Hertford Players were in situ, rehearsing for their run of Wendy & Peter Pan at The Minack Theatre in Penzance. There was plenty of action to entertain us as Peter Pan and Captain Hook practiced their sword play and props included ‘flying beds’.

The garden was in wonderful bloom and the star of the show was a mature Cotinus Smokebush - its jumble of low level gnarled limbs resembling a living sculpture.

Hertford Choral Society

Paint and draw the rehearsal at All Saints Church, Hertford
22nd June 2024

Members of Hertford Art Society were invited to paint or draw the musicians and choir at this rehearsal of the Summer Concert – “Music from the West End”. Favourites from West End Shows – with choir, soloists and band was to be performed that same evening in the beautiful venue of All Saints Church. Artists enjoyed the afternoon to highlights from Wicked, Mama Mia, Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. “Lovely music to paint to, just not enough time to do justice to a complicated scene,” remarked one artist.

Pictures by Alona Kushnirenco, Derek Carey, Geoff Bennett & Diane Warburton

Mono-print Workshop at the Hertford Museum led by Geoff Bennett

10th May 2024

Each year the Art Society is invited by Hertford Museum to run a series of workshops at the Museum. The first this year was Sally Hunter’s collage session in March. A second workshop, in May, was on mono-printing, led by Geoff Bennett.

‘Mono-print’ is a bit of a misleading description since one can make multiple copies; one can also chose to vary both the arrangement of prepared stencils and the colours inked onto the them between each print to create a group of different combinations of figurative and abstract images.

Members of the workshop created stencils from thin polystyrene sheets rather than the more traditional lino sheets. Cutting polystyrene with scissors or a Stanley knife is a lot quicker than gouging out Lino with a special Lino cutting tool, and gives more time to experiment in the 2 hours of the workshop.

The result was a lovely collection of quite different treatments, as can be seen from the accompanying photos.

A third workshop will be held at the Museum on 13th September, creating 3D figures from a plaster-impregnated fabric called Modroc.