Celia Cook Ostinato
Celia Cook Ostinato
12 Northgate, Chichester West Sussex PO19 1BA +44 (0)1243 528401 +44 (0)7794 416569 info@candidastevens.com www.candidastevens.com
Ostinato 1-38 is a series of unique woodcuts inspired by musical improvisation or the jam session - a process both structured and intuitive. An ostinato (Italian, meaning obstinate) is a melodic phrase or rhythm continually repeated throughout a composition. This series of woodcuts reuses the same woodblocks in repeated but varied ways creating a series of rhythmic patterns, all different but sharing the same roots. First, a freehand line drawing that captures a sense of tail-chasing movement is made then transcribed to make a set of wooden blocks. This linear starting point can be compared to a musical riff - something to be expanded, elaborated. Once cut, the wooden matrix is used to improvise on paper. The composition is layered intuitively with rhythms syncopated by colour, like a visual form of call and response. Printing wet-on-wet allows an element of serendipity in a colour blending process charged by the myriad of outcomes. A sense of urgency comes from the method bringing an intense focus that drives the work forward. There is a level of risk, a path between experimental chaos and control, as once animated the space cannot be reclaimed and layering is finite before things become muddied. The paintings also generate visualised rhythmic movement, but are made without preliminary drawings so the improvisation is slower and more tentative. Cautiously choreographed lines seek to lead the eye around the canvas. Forms arc and ricochet producing a description of trapped energy. The practice of revision involves continually wiping away and reworking, sometimes over a period of months. Staining and scarring is incorporated, bringing dimensionality and a sense of autonomy. In contrast to the relatively fast process of printmaking, time spent painting is laden with hesitancy and the opportunity for contemplation. On a good day, when the residue from previous incarnations becomes active, the paintings seem to make themselves - a reward for persistence. ‘Lend your ears to the music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?’ W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. 1912 Celia Cook. 2022
Unique woodcuts
Ostinato 16, 2021 Unique woodcut 112 x 56 cm
Ostinato 17, 2021 Unique woodcut 112 x 56 cm
Ostinato 29, 2021 Unique woodcut 112 x 56 cm
Ostinato 32, 2021 Unique woodcut 112 x 56 cm
Ostinato 26, 2021 Unique woodcut 77 x 42 cm
Ostinato 19, 2021 Unique woodcut 76.5 x 58 cm
Ostinato 20, 2021 Unique woodcut 76.5 x 58 cm
Ostinato 6, 2021 Unique woodcut 66 x 56 cm
Ostinato 10, 2021 Unique woodcut 66 x 56 cm
Ostinato 14, 2021 Unique woodcut 66 x 53 cm
Ostinato 12, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 66 cm
Ostinato 18, 2021 Unique woodcut 58 x 76.5 cm
Ostinato 11, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 66 cm
Ostinato 8, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 66 cm
Ostinato 9, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 66 cm
Ostinato 7, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 66 cm
Ostinato 15, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 66 cm
Ostinato 2, 2021 Unique woodcut 55.5 x 55.5 cm
Ostinato 5, 2021 Unique woodcut 56 x 56 cm
Ostinato 1, 2021 Unique woodcut 55.5 x 55.5 cm
Ostinato 3, 2021 Unique woodcut 55.5 x 55.5 cm
Ostinato 4, 2021 Unique woodcut 55.5 x 55.5 cm
Ostinato 13, 2021 Unique woodcut 55.5 x 55.5 cm
Ostinato 21, 2021 Unique woodcut 48 x 58 cm
Ostinato 24, 2021 Unique woodcut 48 x 58 cm
Ostinato 23, 2021 Unique woodcut 58 x 48 cm
Ostinato 25, 2021 Unique woodcut 48 x 58 cm
Ostinato 22, 2021 Unique woodcut 48 x 58 cm
Ostinato 27, 2021 Unique woodcut 48 x 58 cm
Ostinato 35, 2021 Unique woodcut 39 x 44 cm
Ostinato 38, 2021 Unique woodcut 38 x 57 cm
Ostinato 36, 2021 Unique woodcut 33 x 38.5 cm
Ostinato 37, 2021 Unique woodcut 33 x 38.5 cm
Ostinato 30, 2021 Unique woodcut 30 x 35 cm
Ostinato 31, 2021 Unique woodcut 30 x 35 cm
Ostinato 33, 2021 Unique woodcut 25 x 21 cm
Ostinato 34, 2021 Unique woodcut 25 x 21 cm
Paintings
Routouz, 2019 oil on canvas 130 x 100 cm
Besque, 2020 oil on canvas 120 x 110 cm
Logucci, 2021 oil on canvas 110 x 95 cm
Luoso, 2021 oil on canvas 110 x 95 cm
Tisish, 2021 oil on canvas 110 x 120 cm
Kelele, 2021 oil on canvas 45 x 40 cm
Clurdie, 2021 oil on canvas 45 x 40 cm
Hapso, 2022 Oil on canvas 45 x 40 cm
Nute, 2021 oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm
Lines dart out of sight like errant children. Shapes stumble into focus before disappearing into the surface. Colours flaunt themselves only to disintegrate. You search the canvas as if it were a crowd, straining for a glimpse of the familiar. But your route through the work is blocked. Dead ends. Detours. Mirages. The works of Celia Cook are routes without roadmaps, that move from start to destination without a plan. They capture the effort of comprehension, the labour of trying to move forward. The paintings stage the rupture between plasticity and sensibility; the tension between the world you see on the canvas and the one you understand. These are works that are activated by the struggle inherent in them, performing their own failure as they traverse the tightrope walk between completion and oblivion. The deeper you get the further away you realise you are. Writing of his friend Giacometti, Samuel Beckett observed that “things were insolvable [for him], but that kept him going”. The same is true for Cook. Comfortable resolution eludes both artists, whose work celebrate the act of the endeavour. Staging the process of their own creation, Giacometti’s sculptures and Cook’s canvases articulate their intangibility and in doing so animate themselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the writer’s impact on the artist, it is Beckett who characterises the essence of Cook’s plight best, in The Unnamable: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on” These are paintings that are animated by their own impossibility. Here, to arrive is to fail. You tiptoe through their precarity, contemplating their silences. The route you are following will never relent. So follow the vanishing line. Georgia Attlesey, 2019
Woodcuts printed at Ink on Paper Press, Wiltshire with support from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York.
Published in April 2022 by Candida Stevens Gallery on the occasion of an exhibition featuring the work of Celia Cook Catalogue © Candida Stevens Gallery Text and artwork © Celia Cook Photography © Dan Stevens All rights reserved