This painting has been waiting its turn to reach its final steps of completion for so long. I think I cut the initial wooden form out last summer. But lack of time and with other pictures jumping the queue it never quite got there. A holiday week is good for chasing down such cases!
It is about four feet wide (or 120 cm if you prefer). The sharp graphic quality is a little less present in the actual painting. The hard horizon line works well to anchor the otherwise very flowing and overall dynamism of the form that I cut from the sheet of wood all those months ago.
It is a bit of a wet day here in the Netherlands. But I’ve travelled north to Assen and the Drentsmuseum to see the exhibition of the work of Antonio López.
The main hall of the museum has been transformed with earthy terracotta tones to key in with the colours of the Spanish realist painter’s paintings.
You find yourself feeling the dry heat of Spain on this cool spring morning. The paintings have bleached skies, a shimmering dryness is exuded from the carefully measured city scenes. We view from a distance, nothing moves. These are not dynamic cities that are full of life. We often see far into the distance. Hundreds of buildings fade into the distance, the living places of many millions of people in some cases, but there is a strange stillness, the streets are deserted, not a soul to be seen.
The presence of the artist, often with an elevated viewpoint, camera in hand is given away by the distortions caused by the lens in foreground details. We see a curved wall that we know, in reality, must be straight or a distorted handrail. Such details bring an abstract quality that Lopez seems to enjoy in what are essentially highly realist compositions. We see a similar quality in other works where doorways form an internal framing device.
The paintings remind me a little of the British Euston Road group of painters from the middle decades of the twentieth century, but then exploded to enormous and extensive landscape views.
Like the Euston Road painters Lopez is also interested in the human figure. Unlike the carefully measured paintings of his British counterparts, Lopez is looser and more open in his figure work and the drawings often have a playful quality to them, even to the point that there being apparent ‘spare body parts’ being added to arrangements in form of collage.
The exhibition also includes Lopez’ sculptural work, often of monumental scale. For me at least, these were the less interesting part of the exhibition. I missed the interest that the artist clearly has for surroundings and context, crucial features in the two-dimensional work. The figures and body parts have a detached feeling of isolation.
All in all, it is an engaging show, with a great deal of variety and, like I said at the beginning, a warm escape on a rainy day.
Someone during a TED-talk once said that being able to effectively verbally present an idea, a position, a product or just simply yourself, was a 21st century superpower. It is fairly difficult to argue with such a statement. In these days of AI generated texts, carefully edited recordings and films (also true of TED-talks I guess), being able to verbally articulate yourself and having the courage to simply stand up and perform the necessary does have a raw directness that engages us. Some people have this ability in apparent bucketfuls, others achieve through practice and training and there are of course who never really develop the skill.
With this as background I was lucky enough to be asked to present the Nuffic Soapbox Challenge, the public speaking competition organised by Nuffic for the Dutch Bilingual educational network.
IAs a teenager I avoided at all costs anything that involved stepping into the limelight in any way. In fact, I manged to sneak through my entire education without ever having to stand up at the front and “present”.
That was a while ago of course, and times have changed. Presentations are thing, and a thing from primary school onwards. It’s difficult to imagine an educational context without them now. But within the bilingual world we throw our pupils a significantly more challenging proposition. Stand up and verbally present your theme, but do it in your second, or maybe even your third language.
I was wowed by what I saw last week at the national final. I was talking together the competition for two categories, one for 12-13 year olds and the other for the 14-15 group, while a colleague hosted the 16+ category of presentations. The competitors had been given just a week to prepare a three or four minute presentation on the theme “Be the change”. No PowerPoints here or notes to refer to. Just a broad starting point that resulted in a tremendous diversity of speeches. Amongst the themes covered we had social media pressures, the problem stereotyping, micro-campaigning, standing up for friends, the environmental impact of the flower industry and even one about the racoon problem in Germany. All had carefully thought through and personal content, but once our finalists got the stage, I couldn’t help reflecting a little on my earlier shyness and an uncertainty that so many of us feel in the public gaze. Here we had young people, many of whom have only seriously been learning English for a few years, comfortably engaging their audience with a passion and conviction that will surely stand them in good stead in the years ahead.
A 21st century superpower? Well, yes maybe. But it isn’t just about being comfortable when speaking to an audience, it is very definitely also about having ideas and opinions that are worth listening to. Congratulations to all those who competed.
I rarely post a complete article from another site. But this is a good one, on a subject that is close to my heart. We really should be doing more to help our young people read and interpret images. A skill that it surely every bit as important as learning a second or third language.
The American sculptor Richard Serra died last week at the age of 85. He is known for his large-scale abstract sculptures that often make use of huge plates of thick Cor-Ten steel with a beautifully elegant, rusted surface. I think the first time I saw one of his pieces of work was when I was a student in London. His piece Fulcrum had just been installed as part of the redevelopment of Broadgate around Liverpool Street station. It is a big and serious looking piece of work. Five, fifteen-metre-tall metal plates lean in on each other in an apparently quite precarious balancing act.
It is a serious, and some might say, quite macho sort of piece of work, grabbing attention in the way that it forms a strong relationship with the towering architecture of the buildings around it. And yet there is also the delicacy of the way that the plates apparently just gently rest against one anothe
In an interview from last year Serra himself recounted the activity of play that was the origin of the piece. It was the simple building of a house of playing cards. Leaning one card precariously against the next. It is interesting that such an apparently unmovable object can have such a lightweight beginning. I dare say that Serra, in his own process of play with the cards, experimented with a whole variety of possible configurations. Architect Frank Gehry makes use of similar approaches in early brainstorming phases as he searches for forms and arrangements that interest him.
These steps of playful trial and error are something that I recognise in my own working process. That might be in my studio when designing and planning out future paintings, it might equally be creating lesson material. It is about retaining an open mind, taking the time to experiment with different possibilities and configurations and trying to remain open and aware for the unexpected discoveries that come along the way.
All these qualities are so useful in developing a creative mindset, and that is core business in art education. The aims of the art department seem at times to be so at odds with so much of the rest of the educational scene. Giving our students and pupils ‘ownership’ of their learning and educational processes is often talked about. But at the same time the curriculums are so rigid and the learners, perhaps understandably, feel less than engaged. They are just on the path to the next test.
There are different ways to break and disrupt this pattern. Giving more context to the content and the learning is certainly beneficial, but the hands on ‘play’ that Serra valued in his creative process is hugely under pressure in education. Learning through trial and error, through practical experimentation, and yes, through failures too, are all aspects of the learning (and a creative) process that are facing the squeeze. Simply learning from the book seems, at first glance at least, to offer a better payback to those exams that are fast approaching. And yet it is ‘play’ and practical experience, that so often brings engagement. In a creative classroom you see pupils, maybe within a quite specific frame of learning, finding their own way to make their work become their ‘own’ work. It will hopefully be just that bit different to others in the class, showing their own fingerprints on what they have produced. They will look around and see how the creative moments of play, often in the initial stages of the work have led to quite different paths being explored……and it is those different paths, their unique qualities, that bring the sense of ownership. I have written it before, we should be cautious of too much ‘one size fits all’ in education. It has its place at times, covering the necessary basic groundwork in an area, but ultimately, we need the creative thinkers who can step beyond repetition and reproduction. We need risk-takers and explorers who can apply knowledge and skills in insightful, imaginative, and creative ways, and offering space for play and experimentation in and outside of the art room is part of that.
A couple of weeks ago I went to an education conference. The last session of the day was given by Ian Gilbert of the educational group, Independent Thinking. He joked at the start about the time slot that he had been given, right at the end of the conference. The end of the day presentation slot is very much like the last lesson of the day in school. Everyone is a bit tired, a whole day full of impressions has already passed, and all so often attention starts to drift towards heading home.
It’s a tough moment of the day to be leading. Ian’s presentation touched on many things, but much centred on getting pupils in the ‘flow’, a state of mind where they are up for participation and engaged. He showed a number of short activities that weren’t necessarily aimed at areas on lesson content, but were intended to switch on and activate the attention and minds of the pupils. The thrust of the approach being, that once activated, the mind of the pupil is much more likely to come into a ‘flow’ state of mind that will increase their levels of engagement and performance throughout the lesson.
There is no doubt that during the presentation Ian had me, and much of his audience in a state of ‘flow’, creative, funny and imaginative answers were shouted from the audience. It was fun to participate and time flew by.
With these lessons in the back of my mind I headed off to a school (one I had never visited before) to lead a professional development afternoon for the school’s bilingual team. Here, it was also the end of the day. The team of teachers had already had up to seven hours of teaching already, and then, with all the pupils disappearing off home, I got to work with them for two hours. My theme for the session was using images to generate language output in the bilingual classroom. A nice broad subject that would have things for all subject areas. But the big question for me, was would I be able to get them in the ‘flow’?
Well, here there should be a big thank you to Danielle and her team of teachers. Despite the lateness of the session at the end of the school day, they threw themselves into the activities. My activities were quite different to Ian Gilbert’s examples, but they did share a number of similarities.
They were short and easy to follow
They were playful in their design
Thy invited a degree of sharing and participation
We bounced through from one activity to the next, with the next moment of activation never far away. There was discussion, laughter and occasional silliness. And before we knew it, two hours had passed, no break, no dips in attention, as a room we were ‘in the flow’!
Ian’s presentation left me pondering a number of points, which was of course the aim. Some of which I was able to integrate into my workshop. Hopefully some of my participants will have left with ideas that they can make use of and develop a little further.
Education is constantly in a process of flux and change. Teachers are required to change every bit as much as the overall system itself. But with the educational week so full with lessons, essential meetings and general school day issues that seem to fill every moment of every day, the question has to be asked when and where is this meant to happen?
We seem to be in a bit of a log jam in education. I find myself looking at other sectors where on the job training and development seems to get a higher priority. If we are serious about improving a system that is straining at almost every point, we really need to address how intense and full the working day is, and how little space there is to actually try and improve quality. The two hour session today was for me a positive note, but the truth is, it simply doesn’t happen enough, and will the teacher’s involved feel they have the time to make use of what they learned and develop it that step further to make it their own?
“Do you like gravity?” It was said to me at the end of a lesson in my very first year of teaching. The pupils were clearing up and slowly leaving the classroom. One of the children came up to be and in perfectly good English, but with a still fairly strong Dutch accent said to me “Do you like gravity?”
I must admit, I was a little thrown by the question. I’d never thought about gravity in that way. Is it something you can like or dislike? Is there a choice to be had here? And why was he asking me, the art history teacher?
The pupil must have seen the confusion on my face, so he tried again, “Do you like gravity?”. I continued to be baffled, he tried one more time, “Do you like gravity?……you know like on walls and stuff”. And then the penny dropped, he meant graffiti, but the pronunciation was an often-heard Dutch mispronunciation that while quite subtle is non-the-less very important! It was suddenly, a lot clearer why he was asking me the question.
It is a slow process, but maybe I am. Every time I get busy with the roller and press I find myself thinking back to the fantastic print room I had access to at Wimbledon School of Art when I was there, and how little use I made of it, despite the knowledge and enthusiasm of my mentor, Julia Farrer. Now all these years later I am trying to catch up a bit. I struggle a bit with the attention to detail that so many good printmakers seem to have, learnt over the years I suppose, to avoid a poorly inked block or the irritation caused by a messy thumb when handling the paper.
But slowly and steadily things are improving, and today’s results were good and maybe more importantly they have already hinted to me at what I should be trying next.
Today I am returning to my first school. Not my first as a pupil, but my first school as a teacher. The Wolfert, in central Rotterdam. I was a fresh, just finished teacher training sort of character back then. My first job in the educational system. I was teaching thirteen to fifteen year olds art history as part of the school’s bilingual teaching stream.
But things move on, and times change. I return there today as a workshop leader for a conference hosted by the Wolfert in collaboration with the World Teachers Programme from the University of Leiden. A good few years have passed in the meantime, and I am quite a different teacher, although I would like to think, still with the same enthusiasm for teaching.
My workshop will essentially be about the best parts of my teaching practice, and in particular how I integrate language and international themes into my art and culture lessons. There’s quite a bit about such themes to be found on this blog over the years, so feel free to search through the older posts!
Completing this particular educational circle will be nice to do. I’m pretty sure that after a twenty-four year break there are only a few teachers left at the school with a shared overlap in this little snippet of history. Although there is one who deserves a mention, although at the time neither of us were aware of our future crossing of paths.
I just missed teaching this particular pupil. Let’s call him Flint, he was in the fourth year when I was teaching the second and third years. Several years later Flint became my team leader at the school I’d moved onto. We enjoyed four tremendously productive and fun years working together before he moved on to new pastures. He has also gone on to complete his own educational circle and tomorrow we will meet up again at the Wolfert bilingual school where he is now director of the school where he started as a pupil, and I started as a newly qualified teacher.
What goes around, comes around you might say, although it does make me feel like I must be one of the more ‘experienced’ teachers now!
I should also say a thank you to someone else who’s educational circle has crossed mine regularly enough over the last few years, and that is Tessa, from the World Teachers Programme. People like Tessa open the door for teachers to get out of the classroom, to show and share what they are doing and simply see their work in a broader and stimulating context, something that doesn’t happen enough in the education world. Thanks for that Tessa!
For a while now I have been making use of water, weather, light, and horizons in my own work. Storm, change, climate, and our relationship with our environment are the themes supporting my folded landscapes. Today I have visited an exhibition of paintings by the Dutch artist Hendrik Jan Wolter in the Museum Vlehite in the central Dutch city of Amersfoort. Wolter was also a painter of water. No so much of the sea and its distant horizons as in my work, but rivers and canals, both in his native Netherlands, but beyond too, France, Italy and coast scenes in Devon and Cornwall in the UK.
The watery overlap with my own work was what drew me to visit the exhibition. It was only a small journey for me to get there, little more than 30 minutes on the train. But after walking around the extensive exhibition, I left feeling like I had travelled a great deal further. You have the feeling that you have journeyed with the artist to these places, seeing the world through an artist who is totally submerged in representing the world, the weather, and the shimmering light around him. It is a very enjoyable experience. Wolter paints with a free enthusiasm for what he sees. These aren’t laboured and overworked paintings. Some have been made rapidly on location, others more carefully worked out studio pieces.
It is of course an understatement to say that a great deal has happened in the hundred or so years since many of these paintings were made. The world is a very different place, the art world has gone through massive shifts and changes and maybe our relationship with the world around us too is not what it was. But these images hold us, there is still so much that is familiar and recognisable. Foe me as a maker of my own abstracted landscapes there are things to learn here, and images that I may well be leaning a little on when creating my own paintings.
Peter Sansom 