More Thoughts About Hurvin Anderson

I recently posted about ‘Reporting Back’, Hurvin Anderson’s excellent exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham.  Having made a couple of visits to view it, and had some time to reflect further; here, (in no particular order), are some more observations about Anderson’s paintings:

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', Oil On Canvas, 2004

• At a time when I have been tentatively exploring ways to augment my own painting practice with other media, it is still wonderful to witness a contemporary artist so wholeheartedly (and successfully), committed to paint.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Imperial', Oil On Linen, 2004

• This is painting for big boys and girls; for people who exist wholly in the modern world but reserve the right to enter into dialogue with a physical artwork; to pay it attention and be worked upon by it in real mental time; not just to be titillated by novelty, glamour or a theoretical mission statement.

Hiurvin Anderson, 'Miss Sylvia', Acrylic On Linen, 2011

• Anderson is unashamed to re-explore the familiar issues of Modern painting.  Not least amongst these are: the old tension between picture plane and illusory depth; the functional scope of brush marks to describe as well as to express and evoke; and the whole, inimical relationship between representation and abstraction.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Livingstone Road)', Oil On Canvas, 2000

• The artist really makes/lets his paint work and is a master of getting across a canvas in multiple exciting ways.  To view his painting is to absorb a catalogue of the material’s potential consistencies, manipulations, extents, application speeds and permitted accidents, (without ever becoming bored). 

Hurvin Anderson, 'Miss S Kieta', Oil On Canvas, 2001

• All of this is done at the service of depicting a recognisable subject or situation.  Even when moving towards abstraction Anderson is mostly stripping back, distilling or exploring the ambiguities of a place into which we could still find ourselves projected.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's: Sitters II', Oil On Linen, 2009

• There’s plenty of evidence of photographic and found sources in Anderson’s paintings but everything is processed through his draughtsmanship.  He is happy to reveal an image’s unfolding by allowing some of its linear underpinnings to remain unobscured.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Double Grille', Oil On Canvas, 2008

• This guy knows his way round the colour wheel.  He handles complementary contrasts and three-primary schemes with varying degrees of saturation, but never crudely.  He balances vivid and more neutral passages with aplomb and also recognises the importance of a strong tonal structure.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Some People (Welcome Series)', Oil On Canvas, 2004

• He’s particularly good with red and green, both together and separately. Recent paintings plunge deep into lush, verdant foliage whilst ‘Some People: (Welcome Series)’ juggles numerous reds with white and subdued cool accents to give Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’ a run for its money.

Henri Matisse, 'The Red Studio', Oil On Canvas, 1911

• ‘Country Club: Chicken Wire’ is a marvelous red and green painting in which the tennis court’s saturated complementary fields are mediated by more neutrally coloured surroundings.  A fascinatingly delineated wire fence extends across the whole canvas, unifying the whole thing audaciously but conferring outsider status on the viewer.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', Oil On Canvas, 2008

• In the ‘Lower Lake’ series subdued greens are juxtaposed with Indian reds and dull pinks to evoke a more sober British Midlands light.  These are still complementary contrasts though and, in Anderson’s painting, ‘red and green should always be seen’.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Lower Lake', Oil On Canvas, 2005

• Like all good painters, Hurvin Anderson knows when to leave things out and his paintings are full of eloquent lacunae.  Varying degrees of rationalisation or omission are used to active expressive effect, for instance in the ‘Peter’s’ series, where abstracted details float free like selective memories, (again, I think of Matisse).

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', Oil On Linen, 2007

• Whether peopled with figures or not, the real subjects of these paintings are place and displacement from context.  Artist, viewer and protagonists alike are dislocated, disorientated or disbarred, like aliens, finding themselves at but never fully of a particular location.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's III', OIl On Linen, 2007

• Sometimes I’ve wondered if I’ll just end up simply painting places.  If that should ever happen, Hurvin Anderson provides a great example of how it might be done.