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Over 50 years in the making. Over 100 substantial works in a range of media and styles. A truly once in a lifetime event. A unique collection that explores the vexed relationships-between 19^th Century academic art and the birth of modernism- as well as other matters more mundane.

Brian E Deagon presents an unprecedented show of his painting from Friday August 26^th to Saturday September 10^th 2016.

Free entry, artworks for sale.

Venue:

Reload Espresso Bar

9 Chrome St, Salisbury

Cafe Opening times: Mon-Fri 6:30am – 2pm and Sat 7am – 2pm

Gallery Opening times: as above, plus Friday and Saturday nights and the odd afternoon

Saturday 27th September: Reload Espresso Bar Variety Show and Exhibition

FREE SHOW!
Food and drinks available – Licenced.

Related Images:

Essays

The Black paintings

Image August 29, 2015 admin

[Not a valid template]Darkness as wrapping

Black is the dark energy from which the universe is spawned.

It is the source of light and colour.

It reveals as much as it conceals

Like an empty stage, black is portent, potent and pregnant, but paused in anticipation. Black is. silent.

Warm and inviting or threatening to freeze like its close relative, Chaos,

Black can swallow substance like a fog,devouring shape and masking the weight of dreams.Yet it sharpens the battle axe edge with Bintent,given form to follow.

Given subtlety, black takes on the character of its mixturesnjxs

It mutates into grey.

I The ancient ones knew all colours came from black and white. Our age was spawned by Newtons prisms.For over 150 years we have been afraid of black.

“Never use black” intoned as incantation by generations.You have heard it yourself. Maybe said it yourself.This ought to be described as a clinically diagnosable medical condition and mandatorily notifiable contagious aesthetic position.

Certainly the so called impressionist painters had no qualms about using black. They didn’t let theory spoil a good picture .And there are many. Gray pictures ,using blacks and completed in the studio.

I have learned from the atelier to mix even my lights with black

I sing in praise of black.

A blank wall and a burnt stick.

Brian E Deagon 2015

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Blog

After the football

January 10, 2014 admin

After the Football

The Superbowl result shocked the World!..

……hang on Brian, you have been here too long.

It shocked football fans in America. The World was not watching, but Americans are brought up to believe that it is. Its a kind of almost endearing innocence, a bit like believing in Santa.

It affected our drawing instructor. For a week now he has been admonishing people who are….wait for it…..”dropping the ball.” Clearly you cannot win the game if you keep dropping it..

In the early stages almost noone drops the ball.( except the Denver Broncos who took 13 seconds to drop the ball) Concentration is high, the game plan is clear.

Map out the “kite”. Locate your drawing on the paper,highest and lowest, left and right. Check your angles with the kite by connecting the dots.

Now develop the kite into the envelope and further into the silhouette. All this while , use a flowing straight line applied very light (it needs to disappear later ) Draw vectors not contours. A bit like Bargue.

Ok, now map the form shadow. (Can have other names like terminator, crescent,block in. )Keep your work loose. Dont commit yourself to a mark that cannot be changed. The need for toughness of the paper is apparent, and quality of your erasers. A word on pencils. Have them sharpened to a very long lead. This allows broad swathes of hatching,as well as needle point.

Now hatch ( using 45 parallel ) the big shadow shapes.

At this point opinion diverges. Do you lightly rub over with a very soft tissue? Do you apply a layer of graphite dust? Or go the purist route and continue working with the pencil.? Do we use a stump.? A mechanical pencil with a 0.7 HB lead.?If you are working on toned paper this is the time to work the lights, because once rubbed, the conte wont take.

We have our shadows blocked. Block lights as well with the eraser .Now we work from the form shadow back into the light. The subtle transitions here are critical. A sudden transition is occasioned by a rapid change of angle in the surface,slow transitions by gradual change. I saw you drop the ball and finger smudge!

By this time you have been working on your drawing for 4 or 5 sessions of 3 hours.

Now is when the ball usually gets dropped. The drawing looks pleased with itself. But we have only just begun the rendering process. We are in front, but its only halftime.

The tones have to be darkened layer by layer, and we begin to lighten by lifting out with the eraser. At the same time, working form modelling using a needle point. Sometimes using parallel hatching,sometimes a circular motion controlling pressure,sometimes irregular squiggles,sometimes cross hatch..The whole time we are refining the drawing,making changes,defining form shadow and cast shadow.Once you think its fixed,you drop the ball. Its an attitude thing. Motivation required.

And now the suprise.Provided we havent dropped the ball the endgame is rewarding. The layers of graphite build up on the clay surface of the paper, revealing and concealing texture. It is a very sensual experience as the layers begin to mimic human skin.

And now you know why i am a convert. The final results can look ” more real than a photo” Its eerie. 5 mornings a week for 4 weeks. Apparently thats what it takes,and why “slow art” has been used to describe what is essentially a sculptural approach.If it is,its like carving a marble block with a toothpick.

“Game over, wheres the cawfee? Anybody got the ball?”

Brian Deagon

10/01/14

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Essays

ATELIER DRAWING LESSON

December 26, 2012 admin

AN ATELIER DRAWING LESSON

Ryan Daffurn’s teaching is not what I expected. And that’s a good thing. We began a long drawing (say 10 hrs) with the admonition to get something down about the design or rhythm of the long lines of the pose in about 2 minutes.

This really surprised. I expected plumb lines to the weight bearing foot, “envelopes” within which details could be developed, and “measure, measure and measure again, after determining the eye level and viewpoint.” Apparently he wants me to work by a succession of approximations, refining and correcting as I go. Gradually I began to understand that accurate construction of design and anatomy can only begin with the whole. The same applied to light, which is constructed by mathematical logic as much as ” accidents of nature.” For example the skin tone differences between sun exposed neck and pale sun deprived chest might be noted or ignored, depending upon the conception. One things for certain, it’s not “look and put” realism. He begins with the overall conception, and is quite happy to idealise( or,if you will,”distort”) for the sake of clarity, gracefulness, dynamism or emotion in the pose.

We really need to say more about what I see as Daffurn’s idealism. It’s not the kind where everyone has a “Greek” nose and all female breasts defy gravity in their perfect cones. It goes much deeper philosophically in a Kantian or Heideggerian sense. It comes from a reverence for the constructed body, and a profound understanding of its structure in three dimensions, and the fourth dimension being potential movement in time, and all within a space of light and colour, revealing and concealing the body at the same moment.

Nothing really needs to be invented, just deeply understood. It’s a proud stance, underpinned by humility. Incidentally, the controlled art studio lighting is not mandatory, it’s just a help to the student. This is all based on a reverence for nature and the body we inhabit. More than that, it presupposes a profound belief in the intelligence of artist and audience, and the visual language they use. We intend to edify our viewer, not shock them This might not be fashionable, but it’s not “dead” as some post-structuralists might claim. To invoke beauty,hope,intelligence,diligence,persistence,structure, design etc may be idealistic and even naïve, but its not wrong..

Drawing of this kind is much more than a skill set or an arcane knowledge. It implies a moral relationship between artist and model I keep using the word “profound”. Because it is

Post script.17/5/13 Studying still life with Ryan is a revelation. I should have expected him to have the same attitude to colour and light as to form. And he does. Once again he is insistent upon the overall conception of light and colour interaction with our perceptual biology. I keep “seeing” what he expects me to ignore. I cannot paint without responding to the incident, the “flash”, the particulars.

Fighting the habits of a lifetime is starting to yield some suprises though, but the actual mechanics of eye movement and focus and the time element when shifting focus I am really struggling with. Its easy to say, “we see with the mind, not the eye ‘. All problems are solvable provided approached systematically. For example, it takes longer to mix my colours than it does to paint the picture, another dimension of the academic method no doubt!

Post script 26/8/13The advice to see and construct the perfect, or idealized sphere as a first step is critical. Only then is it possible to show the shadow shapes, the terminator between light and dark, the form shadow, the cast shadow and all the detail of representation. It is an intellectual activity to construct this ideal world, and an artist should be able to do this without “reality” in front of them. THEN the perceptual takes over, noting the “accidents of nature” nuances of colour, texture and shape.Even here, an algorythm can be developed, like in fractals, to complete the texture of the orange without copying a particular. As I work with Ryan, I am beginning to see how idealism (mind) and realism (perception) work together. Brian E Deagon 29/12/12