Petleys

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Petleys is proud to invite you to Edward Beale's one-man exhibition.

Edward Beale is an artist of passion, his gusto and sense of surrounding give his work an immediacy which threatens to wash over you and sweep you away in enthusiasm for his thickly layed impasto.

His expressive depth and colour bring out a beguiling freshness his views of France, London and Scotland.

The collection of paintings that make up Edward Beale’s exhibition is like a diary of months spent working from a roof overlooking the Thamesat Lambeth Reach as well as travelling to the Hebrides, Derbyshire, Provence, Catalonia and the Dordogne. Each location has particularcharacteristics which help or hinder but always affect his manner of working the paint. The roof offered a vantage point within a few streets ofthe artist’s studio yet revealed new panoramas over the Thames and the city beyond. The few days of heavy snow in January gave a rareopportunity for painting in a blizzard. Edward found that the paint tended to become powdery and crystalline and difficult to manipulate withoutadding more linseed oil to maintain its fluidity. He found he could use the dry, raw appearance of the paint that the conditions had created.

The Hebrides present special challenges for painting outside. Conditions are rarely perfect. Most often the practical difficulty must be overcomeof preventing the easel from blowing over in winds that come straight off the Atlantic. Rain can be constant, or perhaps more infuriating and intermittent. A painting begun in bright sunshine might end in a squall. Even a little sunshine in this terrain intensifies the colours to great brilliance and this can be seen in Edward’s paintings of Coll Beach and the mountains of Harris.

The mountains of the Pyrenees provide a dynamic subject. They can be seen in many of Edward’s Catalonian paintings. The terracotta clay soil, palms and cacti, together with the strong light, make exotic contrasts in this work.

While in the greener region of the Dordogne he visited the medieval town of St Emilion in the heart of the wine growing area. Its parchment coloured stone buildings now accommodate a modern way of life, but to draw them triggers the imagination and a sense of its history. At the top of the steep streets from the old town walls the countryside spreads out in tidy ranks of vines. Tractors, as narrow as they are tall, move along the rows tending the crops.

Several places around the perimeter of St Emilion give an unimpeded view of the town with its distinctive spire rising between the vine covered slopes. The place from which Edward works must have a space for a vehicle, be away from busy roads and have shade to prevent the sun shining directly onto the painting. He found a place at the edge of a vineyard where recent rain had made the fertile soil into a glutinous mud.

The warm May afternoon was perfect for landscape painting. Clouds gathered over the town which was now a series of small shapes along the horizon. It nestled in the landscape. The task was to make these shapes significant enough to read as St Emilion and to show how the fields fell away into the distance and how the sky had become the most dramatic part of the view. Light changing constantly from strong and crisp, subdued and soft, to dark and dramatic presents a quandary which forces the painter to make decisions about what to leave out rather than attempting to put everything in. It is about trying different marks to suggest in two dimensions equivalents for a three dimensional world in order to accomplish an accurate rendering of what he observes and experiences.

Edward’s method of working involves a lot of paint applied in a robust vigorous way. A small aluminium table serves as a palette with tins of paint lined up along the back. Bigger tins of white are placed nearby on the ground. The board has been prepared with wooden battening around the edges on the back to enable the finished painting to be handled and then hung on a wall to dry. The front surface is covered with an offwhite emulsion ground. Just before he begins he covers the surface in linseed oil to make sure the paint stays wet as he works. He chooses the shape and size of the board and then quickly decides on the composition which is sketched in brisk movements using blue or crimson paint.

Working with large brushes he paints wet into wet. With sustained and intense concentration he orchestrates planes, edges, form, tone and colour in a way which owes nothing to photography and everything to observation.

‘It’s about the feel of the day,’ he says.

Edward sets out to keep faith with the medium, by not trying to disguise the painting process. He has this to say about the special paint he uses:

‘The things I first liked about this paint were its malleable viscosity and how well it lent itself to impasto painting. The paint is best used boldly. I use heavily loaded brushes to add an element of unpredictability which I like to exploit. I aim for a sense of energy within a painting. The density of the colours and sensuousness of the paint on the brush are other important qualities. It dries with a sheen that I like very much. Its sheer abundance is liberating. I enjoy being able to use paint in such large quantities.

I was first told about the paint in 1968 at Camberwell School of Art by tutors who were already using it. It was recommended to me because of its high quality and reasonable price. The twenty-eight pound kegs (now five litres) of paint were a revelation to me. I would order several tins at a time. I always felt a thrill of excitement to see them arrive by lorry all the way from Sheffield. I continued to use the paint through my years as a student at the Royal Academy and have been using it more or less ever since those days.’

Claire Edwards, MA, (Phil) July 2009