Tai-Shan Schierenberg - New Work

Tai-Shan Schierenberg, a Briton with a Chinese mother and German father, first distinguished himself in 1989 when he won the National Portrait Gallery’s John Player Portrait Award. Since then several of his portraits have been hung in the National Portrait Gallery and his commissions have included a double portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. He also appears as one of the judges in the Sky Arts series Portrait/Landscape Artist of the Year.

His latest exhibition, New Work, comprises a dozen paintings, both portraits and landscapes, in addition to three oil paint-encrusted three-dimensional heads of polystyrene created with colours scraped daily from his painting palette. His paintings are inspired both by features of everyday life as well as found images.

In the window of the gallery hangs Balthasar (above), an interpretation of an image he found in a newspaper.  To view it within the gallery necessitates getting very close up. In doing so, one can see clearly the artist’s technique of broad converging brushstrokes in a patchwork verging on abstraction. With distance, outside the gallery window, one sees a rather beautiful portrait of a man with a gentle expression with an array of bright colours emphasising the light falling upon his dark skin.

That palette range is Schierenberg’s signature, acquired during his formative years as a painter in the Black Forest in Germany which he has continued to visit ever since he was a small child. His father is from a family in Frankfurt who was moved to the Black Forest towards the end of the war when food was scarce in the cities. 

“After he met my mother in London, he dragged us all out there and we’d go and mow the hay with scythes, chop wood and kill goats - it was very much a medieval existence,” he tells me. 

The sense of alienation and fearfulness he has always felt about the place, is captured in Quarry Road Winter - Black Forest (left) with its intimidating rocks, oppressively encroaching on the roadway as the warmth of the sky begins to fade. Once again that bright palette range gives the rocks definition and a certain character with a hint of optimism perhaps beneath the Gothic facade.

Schierenberg describes his father, a fellow painter, as a “monster” yet he keeps returning to this area of southern Germany with which his father is identified. “I miss the landscape. It’s a part of the texture of my being but when I’m there, there is a tension. I don’t know if I’m very happy there but it makes a fruitful ground for painting. “

A much softer landscape is that of East Anglia where Two Bushes, Norfolk (below) was painted. It’s impressionistic in which broad brushstrokes convey a sense of harmony within the flux of nature. Such landscapes provide the artist with fertile ground for experimentation.

“Instead of making a tree by painting the colours you see and putting them into the form it appears in a conscious way, it’s more about putting on approximations and scraping and seeing stuff working through the bottom and having paint running out the back of your brush, approaching the subject from an oblique point of view. I like the idea as an artist of always trying to surprise yourself or breaking your boundaries in a way.”

An emerging theme in Tai-Tsan Schierenberg’s work are depictions of groups of men. His last exhibition included a group of footballers. One painting in the exhibition, Leap of Faith shows a group of 21 male swimmers preparing to dive into icy waters to retrieve a crucifix thrown into the water by a priest. It’s a common ritual practised by followers of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria and Russia. It holds associations with male spirituality and identity and, he admits, has a lot to do with the relationship with his father.

Though Schierenberg normally works with single figures, it was the lurid green hue of his nephew’s anorak that inspired him to paint Brother and Child (left). As he painted the pair, he acknowledged the psychological subtexts that developed. It looked like his brother was holding his younger self, for example, which Schierenberg emphasises by almost melding the two bodies together by the brother’s ear. There’s a sentimentality here certainly, tenderness in the inclination of the child’s head and the way his hands are placed, and contrast in their expressions, the child’s having a hint of confrontation. The portrait is simple in form but with more complex connotations which can be said of many of New Work's paintings in general.

New Work is showing at the Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ until 25 March.

All images are used with the permission of the artist and gallery.

   

Geneva Marathon

Here am I at the start of the Geneva Marathon, full of apprehension but quietly confident of getting round in my target time of 4 hours 15 minutes. It was raining as we started and continued to do so for most of the race, hence the fetching hat.

I'd trained pretty hard for this race. I'd even taken on a personal trainer to increase my upper body strength which was not difficult since it was almost zero. She even got me to break the habit of a lifetime by running more upright, "keeping the core tight" as her voice kept saying inside my head.

I'd also been much more careful about diet and carb loading in the days before and one of my pockets was stuffed full of jelly babies to keep the sugar levels up. And, believe it or not, I'd hardly touched a drop in three weeks.

They call it the Geneva Marathon but actually only the last six miles or so are run through the city. Around 2,000 of us started in a prosperous, leafy suburb called Chene Bourg and then ran deep into the countryside through little hamlets with quaint spired churches. Everywhere was farmland, with horses running around fields, cows grazing and all against the stunning backdrop of the snow-capped Jura Mountains.

The picture above doesn't do it justice - I took it hastily on my phone while trying not to stop.
We'd been entertained at the start by a Swiss jazz band, and a couple more during the course were augmented by one rock band and a group of four elderly women in national costume singing and yodelling a folk song. Being half-Austrian, yodelling is in my DNA, though they remained impassive when I responded in kind. Can't think why.

The race was brilliantly organised with refreshments - water, quartered oranges and bananas - available every five miles or so. Not many people turned out to watch, given that we were in the countryside in the rain, but those who did were most encouraging. The official bibs all have one's first name on. When I did Paris last year, I got fed up with being called "Bub", so I went with Robert this year. So it was "Allez Robert, Bravo Robert".

I managed a first by running 22 and a half miles without stopping. After that, every 100 yards felt like a mile and I was working on willpower alone. About 24 miles in, one of my shoelaces came undone. When I tried to bend to tie it up, my legs refused to allow me to go low enough and when I stood back up, my muscles seemed to push into running at the same speed I'd been travelling beforehand. It's both a weird and amusing sensation that I'd experienced before in other marathons.

In the last mile, by now mentally with the fairies, I stopped again through exhaustion and a Brit in the crowd, dressed in combats, came out and handed me a mug of water. In the loudest of manners, he exhorted me for one last push and told me that the end was around the next corner. As I responded to his encouragement, he called me a legend. That was another first!

When I got to that "last corner", inevitably there were several more to come, but I made it. I looked at my watch - 4 hours, 14 minutes and 56 seconds. Result! That's only six minutes longer than my first marathon run some 13 years ago. Life in the old dog yet.

What's more, I soon discovered that I'd reached my £1,000 sponsorship target for Afrikids - so another result, and a huge thank you to all who sponsored me.

It was time to collect my medal and do what all good athletes should do and stretch. So none of that. At least, not in that way.

Paris Marathon

Well here I was at the start of the race by the Arc de Triomphe. The race began on the Champs Elysees and ended on the nearby Avenue Foch. I was pretty Foched by the time I finished. It went well for 18 miles until I ran low on energy. My fault - I hadn't taken in enough food before the event, partly because it started at 8.45 in the morning, which meant getting up very early, and I was knackered even before I began! It was also very warm - I run best with frost on the ground.
However, I struggled on and completed the race in 4 hours 23 minutes thanks to the bananas and slices of oranges available at the aid stations. As the race neared its end, these became the focus of a kind of feeding frenzy.
It was a beautiful course that straddled both sides of the Seine. We ran past the Hotel de Ville, the Tuileries, the Bastille monument, the Louvre, the Palace of Vincennes, the Eiffel Tower, Musee d'Orsay to mention but a few of the lovely sights. In the Bois de Boulogne we were even applauded by some of the Lady Boys in their mini-skirts and high heels. I don't think they did much business though.
In the tunnel by the Tuileries, the organisers had staged a spectacular light show with rock bands playing. It was great. In fact, there were bands of drummers almost every 5kms - African, Indian, French - it gave the whole race a certain kind of rhythm.
The crowds were huge and extremely noisy. I'm convinced the French are a lot noisier than us Brits - good for a marathon. Whenever someone in the crowd recognised a friend in the race, they'd scream and often join in running with them for a few yards. The competitors were from all over. I saw South Africans, Australians, Americans as well as countless Europeans.
It was a great experience and one I enjoyed (for the most part anyway).
I'd like to thank you all for supporting me - I am close to my target figure of £1,000 for Afrikids. If there's anyone who hasn't sponsored me but who wants to, here's the address.

http://www.justgiving.com/Bob-Chaundy1

Thanks again,

Bob
 

Tough Crowd

 

To the Strand Gallery in London where Dave Brown, who joined us on the last leg of our ambulance trip earlier this year, has an exhibition of photographs of famous comedians entitled Tough Crowd. A monochromed Bill Bailey looks tormented, Julia Davis (above) appears concerned, Chris Addison peers dreamily from behind red scaffolding, Tim Minchin resembles Jesus pondering his crucifixion, Alice Lowe’s mascara streaks down her tear-stained face. These intimate photographic portraits of comedians as you never see them are a selection from more than 50 taken over the past three months. They all have one aspect in common – there is not a hint of a smile.

“I wanted to show how difficult it is to be in the comedy business,”says Dave. “I wanted to show how hard it is to make people laugh, how hard it is to get a break and how hard it is to stay there. Tough Crowd isn’t just about the audience, it also says how tough it is to be a comedian, how thick-skinned you need to be.”

To achieve his idea, he asked the comedians he photographed to recall the lowest moments in their career. It might have been after receiving a scathing review or a night when no one laughed or an audience was rude or hostile. It may have been when a script they had submitted was rubbished and thrown back in their face.

“Comedians are often fragile, sensitive characters at odds with their public face,” continues Dave. “In the early days of trying to make a success of it, you’re travelling around the country on your own ending up in a pub in the middle of nowhere that pretends to be a comedy club but which only has an upturned crate for you to perform on, and then you lay your soul on the line with sensitive material and you’re lucky if four people are listening to you.”

Dave is speaking from experience. He’s been around comedians for 20 years, most notably with The Mighty Boosh together with Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett. He played Bollo the monkey, but as a graphic designer by trade, he created much of the group’s visual identity. He now designs books and DVDs for other comedians including Jimmy Carr and Tim Key. Photography is a sideline passion. He has known Fielding since they were students together at Brunel University and would lend him moral support when he first started gigging. When he joined the Boosh full-time they would enjoy sell-out shows at the O2 Arena but not before the slog of small venues with only three grannies to play to. Dave also knows only too well the truism that what makes a comedian’s job even more exacting is that you may have an audience rolling in the aisles one night and yet the same material dies on you the next. Sara Pascoe (below), another of Brown’s subjects, uses a restaurant analogy.

“When a waiter drops a tray of crockery some people cheer, others ignore it, some are even angry. There are so many factors that can shape the mood of an audience.”

So how did the subjects themselves feel about being photographed in this contradictory way? Jessica Forteskew, who Dave has captured looking decidedly world-weary, sums up the general feeling.

“It was amazing to be asked to do a shot when you didn’t have to go ‘Hey, look at me, I’m hilarious.’”

Limited edition prints from all the photographs on show can be bought from £50 - £100 depending on the size. The money will go to the charity Afrikids that runs projects helping children in the poverty-stricken area of the north of Ghana where Dave has visited and photographed. The exhibition at the Strand Gallery, London WC2, runs until 16 December.

Movements of the Soul Exhibition

Thursday evening, 1 November it was down to Chelsea’s Andipa Gallery to attend Movements of the Soul, the title of the first major solo exhibition of Belgian artist Johan van Mullem, a rising star in the modern art world. As the title suggests, this collection of striking portraits represents windows into men’s souls, an exploration of the psyche, an attempt to depict abstract emotions through tangible pieces of art. The paintings, none of which have titles, are not traditional portraits but surreal interpretations of the subjects’ innate feelings. As in any abstract painting, we the viewer can interpret them in any way we choose. He uses expressive brushstrokes and vivid colours. I found them quite haunting and powerful, sometimes vulnerable, all mysterious. The sorrowful eyes and sad mouths make each one recognisably portraits, some offering several faces in the one picture. Some remind me of those children’s books in which you have to find the face hidden in a morass of detail. They are meticulously painted in ink. As a result, they are drawn quickly, some within an hour, all within a day. I met the man himself, very affable and eager to talk about his work. “Using ink I can remove unwanted brushstrokes completely in a way you can’t do with say watercolours. Once it’s dry that’s no longer possible and ink dries quickly.” There is another reason for speed. His paintings are expressions of deep emotions drawn from daily experiences, nostalgia and dreams. “Once I arrive at the time when I step back and start analysing what I have painted, I know the work is finished.” Yellows, browns and reds dominate. Van Mullem, 53, began by drawing in black and white, then moved to painting only in sepia. Russets were a natural development. Embedded in van Mullem’s psyche is an unhappy and lonely peripatetic childhood in which he followed his Belgian diplomat father from country to country. He was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spent seven formative years in Tunisia. His parents refused to send him to art classes since they regarded an artist as an unsuitable profession for their son. Young Johan had started drawing portraits from the age of five and found art as the only way he could express his true inner feelings. He turned inward, at one time contemplating suicide. He lived what he calls a “Jekyll and Hyde” life. He studied architecture and became a city planner in Brussels, “playing a role that was not me.” It was only when he decided to become an artist full time that he feels he achieved what he calls true contentment. “It’s not that I wanted to paint, I needed to paint, to express my real self.” The introspection he practised for decades is at the heart of his work and has remained despite his “rebirth” as a person. It is difficult to reference other artists’ influence in these portraits though some have likened the themes to those employed by William Blake and Francisco Goya. His life, he says, has been a difficult journey and, in the same way, each painting is the manifestation of a particular emotional story. Check it out and make your own journey. Johan van Mullem’s Movements of the Soul exhibition is at the Andipa Gallery, 162 Walton Street, London SW3 2JL and runs until 25 November.

Bolgatanga - end of the road

There were times when we thought we wouldn't, but on Monday we reached our final destination - Bolgatanga, Ghana. We'd driven more than 4,000 miles, endured an ever-changing landscape, extremes of climate, political instability and mechanical breakdowns. But we made it intact. The last day was not without incident. We'd bade a tearful farewell to Malvena on the Friday night - it was strange not having her in the car and we all missed her. But Philip Hancock and Dave Brown, whom we picked up in Ouaga for the final leg of the trip, soon established themselves as entertaining travelling companions. We travelled on Sunday to Nazinga Game Park in Burkina Faso which boasted several hundred elephants. Whether they were all hiding or had been shot I'll never know but we saw not one of the long-nosed bastards. On the Monday morning we made our way to the Ghana border where, guess what, Beast 2 wouldn't start. We'd had a problem with the battery and so when a mechanic came it was easy for him to spot the problem and cure it at least temporarily. I was pleased because the idea of being towed into Bolga would have been humiliating to say the least. When we did finally arrive in mid-afternoon we received a warm welcome and a couple of bottles of bubbly. It had been an unbelievable trip. We learnt a lot about the countries we visited, a considerable amount about diesel engines and car electronics, and more importantly something about ourselves. I'd like to add my personal thanks to all those who followed our progress and who offered their support both moral and financial. Without you it would not have been possible to realise this crazy idea. But achieve it we did.
Thanks also to my family for putting up with my long absence, and to Ben, Nick and Malvena for all the fun we had. It was unforgettable and I believe we've left the Ghana health service with two fine vehicles especially the one with the roof rack! .

Ouagadougou

Beast 1 wouldn't start when we set off on Thursday morning. The Maissa Hotel was a pleasant place to break down and the people at reception summoned a mechanic within minutes. While Nick stayed with the stricken car, Malvena and I bought provisions and changed money and by the time we returned the car was fixed. The clutch that had been repaired the previous day had been fashioned from a part not specifically designed for our Nissan. We now had the right component and it drives like a dream. We drove over the border into Burkina Faso with scarcely a hiccup and decided to push on the 450 miles to Ouagadougou. Nick and I led with Malvena following with i-pod in her ears. It was a difficult drive once night fell. There were lorries that had no lights seemingly popping out of nowhere and the inevitable potholes. Yet we were exultant when we arrived at the Hotel Yibi at 10.30 and took great delight in waking Ben up. He was pleased to see us. He felt he'd missed out on the lows and therefore the whole experience. It took some convincing!