Dark Was The Night
Weald Contemporary
The Mill Studio, Ford, Arundel
A solo exhibition
Dark Was The Night, the title of this exhibition, is taken from a Blues song written by Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)1. These words imply certainty, facts that can’t be denied. Night brings darkness (in our part of the world at least) and yet, the night remains full of colour despite, or perhaps because of, the dark. We are forced to examine the night closely for differences in the blue (not black, in my experience).
The moon and sun make startling interventions in the night sky, not to speak of other planets occasionally visible to the naked eye. It is easy to romanticise the moon and the sun, they are undeniably extraordinary in their constant state of flux. But we know more about them as planets than ever before. Their movements are no longer a mystery to us, they can be treated as fact, as sure as ‘dark was the night, cold was the ground’.
A degree of fact is therefore evident in many of the titles ‘Planet above Newcastle lights’ for example. But these are not factual ‘pictures’, no traveller could guide their journey in their interpretation. Rather the ‘facts’ are the starting point for paintings. The ultimate goal is for them to work as paintings, regardless of fact. Painting is subject to its own set of rules, albeit often far from scientific. Pinning down in paint a cloud illuminated by the moon, a building by street-light, requires the laws of painting more than science. The mysteries of painting are hopefully more apparent than they are in the subject matter.
The majority of these paintings were made in West Sussex. Their subjects are the view from the garden (increasingly encroached on by new houses); and Northern Ireland, where I visited often before moving permanently this year. The remainder were painted in the first few months in Ballywalter, a coastal village in Northern Ireland. The absence of houses in the foreground has let the skies stand alone in these later paintings. The sky produces an infinite number of subjects, presenting anew every moment of every day (and night). The battle to make paintings is only matched by the endless number of possible starting points.
These works evolved from paintings of Dundrum, Northern Ireland. Initially flooded in sunlight, they gradually became darker as paintings of dusk appeared (Scoper, Paths to the Sea). The late-night trudges to the studio past the new houses that lined my route brought the first night paintings (Moonlight and Streetlight Over The Houses). Of late, with a new and unarguably more positive vista to draw from, sunrise paintings have become more common.
1. The song is one of 27 pieces of music included on the Voyager Golden Record, launched into space in 1977 to represent the diversity of life on Earth.
