Gladwell & Patterson | Paul Brown MMXIX

PAUL S. BROWN MMXIX

Of Rivers, and Fish and Fishing Oil on Canvas • 53” x 53”, 132 x 132 cms

PAUL S. BROWN MMXIX

Paul S. Brown MMXIX 12 April – 3 May 2019

Looking back fondly to last year I reflected on Dad’s 50th year at the gallery.

His traditional values and classical approach to art have stood the test of time as his work with the gallery proves.

A love of classical realism is a delightful experience. Dad has passed on to us all the ability to consider an artistic subject such as this and how to find beauty in the realism depicted there.

I have recently had the pleasure of watching Paul pass on his experience and share his love for classical subjects to his son Nat. He has treasured him growing up and exploring and developing a feeling for the world around him. Something I know Cory and I shared with Dad too.

Paul’s artistic training and lifetime’s painting have seen his perspective on classical painting move through his years in London, Southern Pines in North Carolina and back now to Bridport in Dorset.

His work has seen familiar subjects, wine and cheese reflected in different lights and locations.

Time moves through days, weeks, months and years and with it the beauty of life becomes ours to explore and enjoy. Seasons bring their own personal charm and enjoyment. We all hold particular times of year in esteem. I am a lover of the season of snow when the wind is cold and the air hangs in a frozen chill. It brings its own silent atmosphere.

For others Spring and the joy of new birth, blossom and fresh green leaves will bring pleasure to the heart.

For this 2019 exhibition we are leading you to experience all of Paul’s paintings with an eye on the changing seasons. To feel the natural beauty of the world captured and animated on the canvas – evoking scents, tastes, sensations and memories though Paul’s indomitable talent. Immerse yourself in these spectacular works and savour their beauty. It is our absolute pleasure to present them all to you.

– Glenn Fuller

Spring “And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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“This painting is thanks to my parents-in-law. I got the idea when I was snooping round the potting shed at their house and came across the bulbs in storage about to be planted."

PB

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Spring Bulbs Oil on Panel • 24" x 36", 61 x 92 cms

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Onions and Herbs Oil on Panel • 9½” x 12”, 24 x 30 cms

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Rosemary Oil on Panel • 17¾” x 23½”, 45 x 60 cms

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“All of my paintings have stories. This one began with the champagne foil, which was from a bottle given to my wife. She was having lunch at a restaurant in Piccadilly with our son who was a baby at the time. As my wife and son were leaving, a diner at a nearby table sent over a bottle of champagne. He insisted that she take it with her to drink whenever we chose. It transpired that his son had been paralysed in an accident. Since that had happened, whenever he saw a baby in a restaurant he bought the parents a bottle of champagne as a celebration of life."

PB

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Celebration Oil on Canvas • 24” x 40”, 60 x 102 cms

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Pixie Oil on Canvas 36” x 16”, 91 x 40.5 cms

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Peach Blossom Oil on Canvas 54” x 36”, 137 x 91 cms

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The Dinosaur Egg Oil on Panel • 21” x 22”, 54 x 56 cms

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Summer “Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colours in a parched landscape.”

Harper Lee

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“This painting came about when we were living in North Carolina and my wife was writing an article about an apiary at Wagram. She came back from the assignment with some beeswax and the little wooden box you can see on the left hand side of the painting in front of the smoker. The box is for transporting the queen bee. I was fascinated by the complexity of the honey-making process. The apiarist was kind enough to lend all the beekeeping paraphernalia shown in the painting."

PB

“The worke and fruit of the little Bee is so great and wonderfull, so comely for order and beauty, so excellent for Art and wisdom, & so full of pleasure and profit; that the contemplation thereof may well beseeme an ingenious nature.”

Charles Butler, The Feminine Monarchie, 1609.

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Honey Oil on Canvas • 30” x 42”, 76 x 107 cms

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Delice de Bourgogne Oil on Canvas • 18” x 18”, 46 x 46 cms

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Cropwell Bishop Stilton and Sauternes Oil on Canvas • 20” x 24”, 50 x 60 cms

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“Mint Julep, libation of the American South.

Bourbon, shaved ice, sugar syrup and mint.

Served in a silver cup to keep it frosty.

Think rocking chair on porch."

PB

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Mint Julep Oil on Panel • 16" x 24", 41 x 61 cms

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Phalaenopsis Oil on Canvas 36” x 26”, 91 x 66 cms 24

A Punnet of Peaches Oil on Panel • 14” x 14”, 35.5 x 35.5 cms

Oil and Lemons Oil on Canvas • 10” x 20”, 25 x 50 cms 25

“All these grow right outside our door. I keep a big bunch of them in a canning jar in the kitchen when they’re flowering. I pick the leaves when I need them and throw the flowers into salads."

PB

“All gardening is landscape-painting.”

Alexander Pope

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Kitchen Garden Oil on Canvas • 27½” x 27½”, 70 x 70 cms

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Salmon Flies Oil on Canvas • 4” x 16”, 10 x 40.5 cms

Old Favourites Oil on Panel • 8" x 24", 20 x 60 cms

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River Wylye, Wiltshire Oil on Panel • 11½” x 17”, 29 x 43 cms

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Procida Oil on Panel • 17¼” x 29”, 44 x 74 cms

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Pheasant Tail Nymph

Yellow Wing Mayfly

Oil on Canvas • 4" x 4", 10 x 10 cms

Oil on Canvas • 4" x 4", 10 x 10 cms

Soldier Palmer

Green Copper John

Oil on Canvas • 4" x 4", 10 x 10 cms

Oil on Canvas • 4" x 4", 10 x 10 cms

Donuts Oil on Canvas • 19” x 24”, 49 x 61 cms

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Of Rivers, and Fish and Fishing “I fished just about every day as a child, in that pond by Inverness Road in Southern Pines, the one with the sign that said “No Fishing”. That was the best pond in town, full of fish and no one but us kids fishing there. It was all worms and bobbers back then, or I’d use corn or bread. It wasn’t until we moved out to the country that I started buying lures — rubber worms and such — all the gas stations sold them.

I’d fish with friends on neighbouring farms, using a cheap and dependable Zebco rod and reel or just a cane pole.

For a kid fishing for bass, bream and catfish in irrigation ponds, fly fishing was exotic. I had seen it in the mountains when I went to summer camp. It did look pretty magical. The first time I tried fly fishing was more than a decade later, when I had moved to England. I was with my friend Ed, at some big stately home not far out of London that had a river with no trees around it so it was perfect to practise. And I caught a fish. I went back on the train with it wrapped in newspaper. It was a good size. Now, years on, my rod is part of my landscaping rig. I’ll wet a line between paintings, or when the light changes.

My paintings begin with the story. Fishing is a rich source of narrative for me. It’s a sport I love and I return to it often in still life and landscape. Many times I have been commissioned to paint anglers’ favourite rods, reels and kit. For this painting I wanted to combine stories that I have represented before in one grand event: favourite tackle both antique and modern, fly tying, repair, study, labour, discipline and finally a successful end to the day.

To set up a picture like this, I work out most of it in advance. When I have everything in place I’ll do the first sketching to lay out the composition. This first sketch is almost like a doodle, playing with the space. I’ll draw lines from corner to corner, making an X through it to find my centre, then I’ll find the big hemispheres and further divide each into subsections and play around with squares and angles within them. There’s no real rhyme to it. I just start connecting different angles and blocking off different areas.

That’s how I get my proportions to be geometrically harmonious and to provide movement for the eye.

I’ll hold up the geometric sketch so I can see it in scale next to my set-up, see how things are fitting in.

Then I’ll make a little oil sketch of the set-up. With this one I did move some stuff around, you can see the differences. It’s remarkable how things fall into place; maybe it’s because when I set them up I can see the geometry, so few things have to move much.

There were small adjustments. I added the maps, and other little things as I went along, like the books, those I hadn’t planned. I wanted the viewer to see through the netting all the way, but in fact it was too empty back there for what I wanted to show as a continuum of clutter, so the books were a useful detail to put in.

My wife found a box of feathers from back home and I didn’t have them in my initial set-up — I was just planning on having the wires. But the blue jay feathers really show off the copper and break up the shadow. I’m always trying to think of overlapping — light over dark and colours that clash. Things like that make the eye roam around the painting.

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Of Rivers, and Fish and Fishing Oil Sketch • Oil on Panel 10" x 10”, 25.5 x 25.5 cms

The eye can’t focus on everything at once. You help it by leaving big resting spaces and softening some of the things in the background and around the edges. The boots and stuff under the table, they have to be softer otherwise they start fighting with the things at the top. That’s why they’re not as highly detailed as, say, the Barbour, or the field bag, because they are under the table in the shadow, way out of the picture view.

This painting took months to make. Of that time I painted the trout in three, maybe four, days. I wouldn’t have it out for more than half an hour or so while I was painting it. The dogs were trying to steal it the whole time, staring at it, barking and jumping up, fur flying. There’s spaniel DNA in all my paintings.

I’d put the fish away during breaks to keep it safe — it went right back into a Yeti bag full of ice that kept it fine. I didn’t want it to go bad, particularly since I wanted to eat it, so as soon as I’d finished painting it I ran it home and smoked it with oak wood on the grill that evening. It’s a great big American grill so I threw some duck breasts on too as there was plenty of room.

Like a lot of my work, this painting is a still moment in a sequence of action. It’s the entryway, the place where the fishing stuff goes, where you throw down your things and pull your boots off.

Of Rivers, and Fish and Fishing is about tying flies one day, something I think a lot of us fishers would like to do. It’s about all the gear we possess, old and new, that always seems to grow, because we love it. It’s about hoping my four year old son will use it all one day, with or without my permission, and catch his own fish and love the time spent doing it and love the land and rivers that provide it. It’s about the feelings that are involved with catching a fish: the silent, modest and completely held-in ecstatic pleasure with oneself in being lucky enough to catch such a beautiful beast in its own environment with all its advantages over you."

PB 36

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Autumn “Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.”

Emily Brontë

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Auxey-Duresses Oil Sketch • Oil on Canvas • 6¾" x 11½", 17 x 29 cms

“I made this painting after my first trip to Burgundy. We were visiting friends in the Côte de Beaune area in the autumn, just after the harvest. It was my real introduction to the culture of terroir, how the soil, the climate and land are the key to every wine. Maybe it’s because a lot of my paints are made from earth too, I appreciate that connection to the land and the way of life that it generates.

The vine in the painting is from the vineyard of a friend at Auxey-Duresses. Another friend from the same village gave me the metal clips which hold his vines in place when they are heavy with grapes.

When we first met he was painstakingly removing every clip from the vines by hand in readiness for the next season. The bread is from the boulangerie in Mersault, the Époisses cheese from the fromagerie in Beaune.

The bottle is unlabelled because it is the winemaker’s own. I just wish I could have painted the steaks we ate."

PB “Only the vine reveals to us the true taste of the earth” Colette

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Terroir Oil on Canvas • 27½" x 35½", 70 x 90 cms 41

“My friend Lawrence shot the rabbit in this painting. I got the turnips from the farmers’ market and put them together because it was a field thing. It seemed right.

To be honest when I was painting them it made me think of the episode of Bugs Bunny with Yosemite Sam and the Hasenpfeffer Stew."

PB

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The Morning’s Take Oil on Canvas • 28” x 28”, 71 x 71 cms

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“It’s probably no coincidence that I was listening to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series when I was working on this big culinary painting.

O’Brian’s stories are loaded with the grand dining style of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It’s a combination of that and what I imagine a chef might get up to if he were at a French country place for a month. Big feasts."

PB

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Cuisine Oil on Canvas • 42” x 42”, 107 x 107 cms

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West Country Apples Oil on Panel 8” x 12¼”, 20 x 31 cms

Veritas Oil on Panel 11½” x 16”, 29 x 40 cms

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Thyme Oil on Canvas • 18” x 30”, 46 x 76 cms

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“I like painting onions because they offer just about all the challenges.

If you pull away a little bit of the skin you’ve got that beautiful rich colour with a very slick glossy surface. There’s also a density that needs to show. Those thin tightlypressed layers have a glow that comes from within, and that’s tricky to capture.

Using hand-ground paint I’m able to get really thin strings of paint to create those papery edges of the skins. You have to get that Bible paper thinness. Only an onion has that. And dryness, wetness, thinness, thickness: that’s why they’re fun.

They are wonderfully out of their element on glass in this painting."

PB

A menu from The Compleat Housewife or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion.

by E. Smith, 1753 edition.

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Onions on Glass Oil on Canvas • 17¾” x 31½”, 45 x 80 cms

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Delicate Flavours Oil on Panel • 6” x 18”, 15 x 46 cms

Autumnal Goats' Cheese Oil on Panel • 8” x 12”, 20 x 30 cms

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Carrots Oil on Panel • 18” x 18”, 46 x 46 cms

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“When we were over in America this was my chance to paint all the really neat artisanal cheeses that are being made there now. We discovered them through farmers’ markets and friends who had opened a cheese shop in town. In this painting there’s a Humboldt Fog, from Humboldt County, California; an Asher Blue, made at Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasville, Georgia and a Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, aged at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont.

The persimmons are a native fruit, they thrive in the Southern states. These ones came from trees growing in the fields at home. When they ripen you have to get to them fast, before the possums do.

The decanter and glass were hand-blown locally at Starworks glass studio. And I had a world class American wine to go with them."

PB

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Screaming Eagle 2007 Oil on Canvas • 24" x 34", 60 x 90 cms

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Winter “Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.”

John Boswell

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Snow and Sun, the Red Barn Oil on Canvas • 24” x 40”, 61 x 102 cms

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“I love painting the old Lafite labels.

They’re like stained antique etchings."

PB

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Tappit-Hen of Château Lafite-Rothschild 1948 Oil on Canvas • 24” x 36”, 61 x 92 cms

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Château Margaux Oil on Canvas • 18” x 18”, 46 x 46 cms

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A Moment to Savour Oil on Canvas • 18” x 30¼”, 46 x 77 cms

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Croft’s Vintage 1945 Oil on Panel • 20” x 26½”, 51 x 67.5 cms

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Dordogne Oil on Panel 21” x 30”, 54 x 76 cms

Gorgonzola e Schiacciata con una Bicchiere di Vino Oil on Canvas 18” x 18”, 46 x 46 cms

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“This is my altar. That’s the palette I use every day. Those are my paints, my dip cans, my medium in the old rye whiskey bottle. The bread, wine and cheese set-up. This is something I do a thousand times a day: put my palette down, step back, take a break, see where I’m at.

When you put a palette down with brushes in it, you get the lifted angle that you see here.

That’s something only a painter would know. If you put the brushes down separately and they’re dirty they’ll roll paint everywhere and land on the floor. So you keep them in the palette and when you pick them up again you can grab them by the neck, like Johnny Cash holds a guitar."

PB

Palette Oil on Canvas • 24" x 48", 60 x 122 cms

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A Good Day Had By All Oil on Canvas • 24” x 30”, 60 x 76 cms

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Tiger Oil on Canvas • 33½” x 73”, 85 x 186 cms

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My Twin Oil on Canvas • 18 x 24”, 46 x 61 cms

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