This is Mr Darke sees the Light by Stephen Angel. It cost £945 when I saw it in a gallery in Bath in the 1980s, making it one of the most expensive pictures I have bought, so it’s lucky I like it.
Whatever Stephen Angel is doing now I don’t think he is an artist. He had a studio in an attic in Royal Crescent looking over the allotments – a patchwork of shades of green with Mr Darke observing the seagulls, the rainbow (both easy to see) and a lot of well concealed cats. What does the picture mean? I haven’t a clue but I find it beguiling. A bonus is the Georgia O’Keefe- esque triangle of blue sky in the top left corner.
I only have one picture that I thoroughly dislike. I kept it on the wall for ages while trying to persuade friends to take it as a gift. Finally I put it in a cupboard where it still is. Jack Rutherford claims to be represented in over 2,000 private and public collections throughout the world – including my cupboard where suitcases, waders and a top hat are stored. I will not distress my or your sensibilities by showing you the horrid Rutherford. I have a print by him that I like very much. You can see it in a post I wrote last year, A Peregrination.
I have been picking up pictures, bronzes and ceramics for over forty years and am pleased with the eclectic collection that surrounds me. Some of the pictures are by artists whose work hang in the Tate, the New York Met, the National Gallery of Ireland, etc. This is not to swank but to make the point that were I to sell the lot I doubt they would raise £50,000 and, if a couple of the more obviously better ones were excluded, £10,000. Had I put my money into a good old fashioned Investment Trust I would be a lot richer but visually impoverished.
Now, though there’s no wall space, I still look longingly at gallery invitations. I rather fancy taking a look at Richard Hearns. It’s his first exhibition and like Stephen Angel, maybe his last.
Time for Art (Garfunkel) ? No, it’s Sunday.
Couldn’t agree more. As you demonstrate regularly via your blogging, art (of all sorts) is part of the mix of elements in life that makes it interesting to get up in the morning. Museums can show us the finest examples, but galleries can give us more immediate access and let us make our own judgements, ahead of consensus and posterity. And it is quite fun to look, to speculate (in the non-financial sense), and especially to acquire visual and decorative art. I must say, your history of acquisition sounds more successful than mine. (Speaking of art, I am hopeful for a report of an upcoming Verdi Requiem, one of my favorite works.)
The name of the artist juxtaposed with the lofty-sounding dark/light title is striking — it sounds a bit like something out of a novel.
I am mightily amused at Mr Darke sees the Light being the title of a, modern, novel. Author def female, setting perhaps in a West Country village. “A poignant first novel of loss and redemption that will stir and shake until the reader becomes a Dry Martini.”
Ha! I’m sure it would be terrifyingly edifying and soul-stirring — but I fear the outcome reading of such a novel would be something less delightful than a dry martini