A wonderful validation of Alexander’s work…
Sir Stephen Lamport GCVO DL speaking at Alexander’s most recent exhibition…
“Easter Week could not be a better moment to begin an exhibition of Alexander Creswell’s watercolours entitled ‘Journeys in the Holy Land’. But Jerusalem is not an easy option for an artist because this city, so fundamental to the origins of Christianity, is equally a uniquely holy place to both Jews and Moslems. So capturing its essence is complex, even for the best of artists. Yet this is just what Alex does in these paintings. They show vividly his extraordinary sensitivity not just to the power of texture, colour and light, but more subtlely to the numinous and prayerful meaning of sacred buildings and places of faith, and the creative artistry of civilised peoples. These paintings are beautiful, and they are special.
This is, of course, no surprise. Anyone who had the rare pleasure of seeing Alex’s thirty-two watercolours of the interior of Westminster Abbey, hung in the Abbey’s Chapter House last spring, will have seen for themselves the hauntingly wonderful way in which Alex understands and responds to the inner beauty of powerful sacred spaces. And in Westminster Abbey he has created a unique record of the church which the Abbey has acquired in its entirety for the benefit of future generations. It is Alex’s ability to see into, and give back to us, this understanding of the wonder and beauty of the created world, which makes his paintings so incomparable.
This extraordinary skill is not limited to the obviously sacred. It reflects a quality best described as a passionately felt spiritual depth, which Alex gives to all the subjects he paints. His painting reflects a joy and celebration of the lasting beauty of the world around us. You will find that equally in his paintings of Petra and Little Petra. These are not just works of great skill and beauty in themselves, for these paintings do more: they capture the essence and power of wonderful landscapes in a way which conveys something important about their inner and permanent beauty. Architecture two thousand years old and more has, of course, largely decayed or been destroyed beyond recognition from its original glory. Through his eye and through his images Alex is able to give us a captivating and powerful sense of the lasting beauty of these buildings, and of the expression they continue to give of the extraordinary creative talent of past civilisations, whose achievements and whose deep understanding of the world around them we should never underestimate.
Sir Stephen Lamport GCVO DO 27th April 2019
Journeys in the Holy Land at Watts Contemporary until 9th June, open Daily 10-5pm – All Paintings are For Sale
Please visit the exhibition Get Directions to Watts Gallery
Journeys in the Holy Land – Watts Contemporary Gallery 27 April – 9 June 2019
All works are for sale.
After the grandeur and precision of my series of paintings in Westminster Abbey exhibited there in 2018, I wanted to focus on subjects of equal magnificence but with a less formal approach, and a return to the Holy Land seemed a natural progression. It is a privilege to be showing some paintings from my journeys at Watts Contemporary.
These journeys began in Jerusalem, exploring the hectic streets, the intricacies of gateways, fountains, the grandeur of mosques, churches & temples, from the Western Wall to the Holy Sepulchre and on to the Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem is several cities in one, each jostling for space, unified by faith and divided by dogma. While the city has a humble beauty, its stones resonate a spirit of exceptional complexity manifest over several millennia by the intensity of the beliefs and hopes of inhabitants and pilgrims alike. I worked on hasty sketches in the crowded streets & spaces, with broad splashes in watercolour and little time for details as I attempted to capture something of the power and peace of the place.
From Jerusalem to Petra was a journey back in time, through Bethlehem and the secluded cliffhanging monasteries in the high plateau of Judea into the Dead Sea valley, onward up to the Kings Highway to the rocky badlands above Petra.
In Petra I found the very antithesis of Westminster Abbey. I embarked on a series of fresh, almost abstract sketches – colour, texture, dust and light, far from meticulous architectural detail. Harsh sunlight and mineral colours combine to make patterns of imagination. Against the uniformity of rock, the variations of texture and form are animated by changing light, shade and angle, providing a kaleidoscope of colours and surfaces which are a joy to the painter’s eye, often with the same static subject radically morphing from one moment to the next.
In Petra the voice of abandonment murmurs in the remnants of carved rocks. The eye is constantly caught by the hint of a carved figure, or the ghost of hewn steps which once had led to somewhere important. My inspiration grew out of a sense that the battle between the manmade and the natural had been reversed. Man had brought out the forms from the living rock, in the same way that Michelangelo had drawn his sculptures out of stone, liberating monumental figures from stone. Here too in Petra the fine carved facades seemed drawn out of the rock, and eroded for centuries, as if reverting to their original form, the works of man crumbling beneath the forces of nature. Was order emerging from the chaos of nature’s forms, or was it being eroded and ingested by time? The question was captivating. I have been bewitched by this dichotomy throughout my work, from derelict stately homes, burnt-out castles, classical ruins and war-ravaged cities.
It all signifies that nothing is permanent, except perhaps the records of it all in art, literature and music.
Alexander Creswell 2019
Painting of the Year 2014 – New Horizons: A Ceiling Painting
After what has been a progressively uncomfortable year, I have both pleasure and relief in revealing a painting which has been the product of much thought, deliberation and soul-searching in the quest for a meaningful direction for my future: I take pleasure because the painting is almost finished, and relief because it seems to have been successful, at least as far as I had intended it to be.
A year ago I had an interesting discussion with a collector in New York who lamented his lack of wall space as hinderance to enlarging his erudite collection. Perhaps cheekily I had suggested that he had unadorned ceilings which could be employed to display works of art in the eighteenth century manner, in keeping with his collection of European paintings of the period. The resulting conversation concluded with a commission for me to undertake such a painting, in watercolour and on a significant scale. This would be a first, both for watercolour and for contemporary art. It would be new ground for me: I relished the idea and rushed off to Italy to consult the masters of the settecento.
In the first instance this picture – now almost completed – represents a new horizon for me, perversely for the simple reason that it has no horizon. Being a view upwards though an imaginary roof to an infinite sky, it has a perspective which relies on the third dimension of the vertical, a perspective cut free from the merely terrestrial. Secondly this view has no subject as such, no representation of reality other than the sky and sunlight above an invented architecture which departs from the observance of reality. Thirdly, and importantly for me, this view is not factually representational but borrowed in part from history, then adapted and invented. Fictitious in this architectural tableau is the population of what appear to be ghosts whose only function is to represent those tenets and disciplines of life which we, the viewers, might have taken for granted: faith, toil, sagacity and fecundity – in common parlance: confidence, hard work, knowledge and productivity.
But what is the purpose of this painting, I hear the muttered question tinged with cynicism? Well, I’ve been loyal to the representational for most of my painting life, faithful to place and light, to truth and to the actuality of the subject. Occasionally however the truth is awkward or uncomfortable. During my career I have painted beauty, elegance and grace in architecture. I have also painted fate as manifest in the destruction and neglect of ruins. Sometimes the inspiration comes from unlikely quarters: over the past year my path ahead has been at times tangled and obstructed, calling for diversion and courage, flavoured with sadness and reflection – a landscape of Dante as I am reminded. With encouragement I found the leap from the familiar to the unknown in this work to be daunting and yet inspirational. It required courage in the confrontation of possible – or probable – failure. Rather like leaping from a runaway train, escape was the principal motivation behind this painting.
Although not quite finished, today we installed this painting in the ceiling of my studio, in a proper place to test its efficacity before the final details are elaborated in preparation for its dispatch.
Some remarkable things revealed themselves: floating overhead the picture morphed into a completely fresh image, unencumbered by accuracy and correctness. Let me explain: we are accustomed to the terrestrial world with a horizon, we gape up at skyscrapers in Manhattan or peer down into the Grand Canyon, but from the safety of our horizon-based world – terra-firma. Everything is related to the horizon, our level, our balance. We might look out of the window of an aircraft at 35,000 feet but always with the horizon to give us a fixed point: remove that horizon and we suffer from vertigo, dizziness and disorientation. Looking up at a ceiling painting we can feel the ability to fly into it and soar like a bird, freely but with our feet still firmly on the ground.
Given freedom from our earthbound horizons we loosen our reliance on accuracy and on truth. We can twist and turn to look at this view from varying angles without questioning, simply enjoying the gift of flight, at least momentarily. We are looking at a picture which is not a view in the conventional sense, more of a virtual reality which we can enjoy without cynicism, not requiring the affirmation of being ‘correct’. As a representational painter I find this departure very exciting.
So what of this image on the ceiling? At worst it’ll be a talking point, a curiosity: maybe it’ll challenge the condemnation of representational art as somehow shallow and passé. Maybe it’ll start a trend. I would hope it might encourage other enlightened patrons to ask me to do more, far larger ceilings to be installed in places where they can be seen by the world.
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Under the archway furthest from the sun in the painting, a cartouche bears the following inscription:
“Beviamo profondamente dal pozzo della tradizione e nutriremo l’arte del futuro”
(tr. “We drink from the well of tradition to nourish the art of tomorrow”)
The sentiment is entirely mine and the observant viewer may recognise a veiled reference to Andrea Pozzo whose huge fresco ‘The Apotheosis of S Ignazio’ adorns the nave vault of a church close by the Pantheon in Rome, which provided me with the inspiration and model for this painting, together with the courage even to imagine that I could actually achieve it.
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I would be delighted if you forward this to anyone who would value the message or who might simply enjoy the painting.
With best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and many thanks to those who have encouraged me through a difficult year.
Alexander Creswell, Christmas 2014
