Derrick Greaves

MANDELLS GALLERY

DERRICK GREAVES

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DERRICK GREAVES

DERRICK GREAVES IRISES, ETC . RECENT PAINTINGS AND WATERCOLOURS

3-24 November 2018

Mandell’s Gallery In association with James Hyman Gallery

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DERRICK GREAVES

IRISES, ETC . RECENT PAINTINGS AND WATERCOLOURS BY DERRICK GREAVES I recently visited Derrick Greaves at his Norfolk studio to see his new paintings. As with each visit I have made over the last twenty or so years, I came with the excitement of knowing that I would be seeing new and surprising pictures. But this time I was especially intrigued. For some years Derrick has suggested, only half-jokingly, that once he turned 90 (which he did last year) he would stop making large paintings and instead devote himself to watercolours.

But once again he surprised me. Yes, there were new and beautiful watercolours – some fresh subjects, others a reinterpretation of earlier motifs based on the rediscovery of drawings from decades ago– but there were also several big new paintings all made this year. It was truly inspiring.

Derrick’s youngest son, Daniel, calls him Mr Prolific, and it is certainly astonishing to witness not just the continued invention but also the confidence of the new work. But this is only part of the story for Derrick is a terrific (and terrifying) self-editor. There may be new paintings each time I visit, but he is also a harsh critic of his own pictures.

Frequently, he destroys work, paints over it or reworks a picture into something altogether different: it’s a nightmare for cataloguers! I remember remarking that a beautiful new still life on a burgundy ground echoed an earlier painting on a green ground, only to be told, sheepishly, that it was the same painting, entirely reworked.

It is also wonderful that each exhibition on which we have worked has had a distinct identity. I particularly enjoyed working on our 2013 show, entitled All Blues (after a Miles Davis piece), which explored Derrick’s use of the colour blue. This latest exhibition, Irises, etc., remains true to this thematic impulse, focusing on recent paintings that foreground a central motif, in this case irises.

Still lives and flowers studies - roses, tulips, grasses, irises are a leitmotif of Greaves’s entire oeuvre but this sustained focus on irises was sparked by a private commission for a property situated between the sea and an iris-filled nature reserve. This engagement led to powerful paintings that appropriately often use a palette of blues and greens to set off the purple and orange of the flowers. It also resulted in powerfully economic black ink drawings and subtly coloured watercolours.

Greaves’s most characteristic images often have an heraldic quality that is a reminder, also, of the artist’s teenage origins as a sign painter. In a parallel universe you could imagine his emblematic paintings of a cafetière or a single iris hanging as signs outside a coffee shop or florist just as oversized spectacles once hung outside an optician and a striped pole outside a barber. In such works Greaves distils the subject to its essence and it is tempting to suggest that something similar is taking place in these latest Iris pictures.

The two large paintings at the heart of this exhibition, Iris I 2018 and Iris II 2018 each show three images of an iris set against a dark ultramarine background that refine the flower to its essentials. But looking more deeply at these two paintings and the related works, especially the beautiful studies on paper, something else suggests itself.

The purpose of an emblem is to generalise in order to provide an image that stands for the entire complexity of a subject, yet each of these “iris heads”, as Derrick calls them, is individual and particular. Indeed one might almost describe these paintings not as still-lifes but as portraits.

To see the works on paper of iris heads hanging in a row on a wall emphasises the distinctiveness of each. Moreover,

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Derrick Greaves with a recent commission of Iris paintings. Photograph John Christie.

if one reads the two large paintings as each presenting a single flower - a central front-on view flanked by profiles - then what Greaves has created is the world’s strangest but most beautiful mugshots: society at its ugliest (think also of Francis Bacon’s triptych head studies) replaced by the beauty of nature.

These, then, are life-affirming pictures and their positivity reminds me of Derrick’s Shangri-La series, made at the time of the first Iraq War, and also of a story that he recently recounted about Henri Matisse. During the First World War, Matisse desperately wanted to contribute.

However, because of his age he was unable to fight.

He wrote to his friend, Marcel Sembat, a government minister for his advice. Sembat replied that the best thing that Matisse could do was to stay in his studio and ‘continue to paint well.’ A century later, in today’s dark times, what could be more inspiring than for Derrick still to go to his studio, each and every day, to produce uplifting works that add light and colour and beauty to our lives.

JAMES HYMAN

September 2018

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From the Garden 1,2,3,4,5 Watercolour on paper 52 x 40.5 cms (20.5 x 16 ins) 2018

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Flowers in a Green Pot with Blind Watercolour on paper 52.5 x 39 cms (20.6 x 15.4 ins) 2018

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Black Flowers in a Black Pot Acrylic on paper 46 x 37.5 cms (18.1 x 14.8 ins) 2018

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Coastal Iris Acrylic on canvas 101.6 x 101.6 cms (40 x 40 ins) 2015/18

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Flowerhead in Oval Watercolour on paper 33 x 48 cms (13 x 18.9 ins) 2018

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Iris Head 1 Watercolour on paper 43.5 x 30 cms (17.1 x 11.8 ins) 2018

Iris Head 5 Watercolour on paper 43.5 x 30 cms (17.1 x 11.8 ins) 2018

Iris Head 3 Watercolour on paper 43.5 x 30 cms (17.1 x 11.8 ins) 2018

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Iris Head 4 Watercolour on paper 43.5 x 30 cms (17.1 x 11.8 ins) 2018

I ris Head 2 Watercolour on paper 43.5 x 30 cms (17.1 x 11.8ins) 2018

Iris Head 6 Watercolour on paper 43.5 x 30 cms (17.1 x 11.8ins) 2018

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Iris I Acrylic collage on canvas 106.7 x 193 cms (42 x 76 ins) 2018

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Iris II Acrylic collage mixed media on canvas 106.7 x 193 cms (42 x 76 ins) 2018

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Vase in Oval Watercolour on paper 44.5 x 57.5 cms (17.5 x 22.6 ins) 2018

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Yellow Flowers Acrylic on canvas 101.6 x 127 cms (40 x 50 ins) 2016/18

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Sphynx II Acrylic collage on canvas 152.4 x 137.2 cms (60 x 54 ins) 2018

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Flower in Vase in Oval Watercolour on paper 45 x 53.5 cms (17.7 x 21 ins) 2018

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Bud in Oval Watercolour on paper 38 x 46 cms (15 x 18.1 ins) 2018

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Princess X Acrylic on canvas 111.1 x 92.1 cms (43.5 x 36.2 ins) 2017/18

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Four Clouds Acrylic on canvas 121.9 x 152.4 cms (48 x 60 ins) 2018

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Bird in Flight Dyptych Acrylic and ink on paper 44.5 x 58.5 cms (17.5 x 23 ins) 2018

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Feet in Stream with Butterflies Watercolour on paper 45.5 x 53.5 cms (17.9 x 21 ins) 2018

My Mother’s Hands Watercolour on paper 45.5 x 53.5 cms (17.9 x 21 ins) 2018

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Male Prof ile Acrylic on canvas 127 x 104.1 cms (50 x 41 ins) 2018

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Parakeet Acrylic collage on canvas 121.9 x 78.7 cms (48 x 31 ins) 2015/18

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Iris Head Watercolour on paper 30.5 x 41 cms (12 x 16.1 ins) 2018

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A Leaf in a Stream I Charcoal and acrylic on canvas 101.6 x 152.4 cms (40 x 60 ins) 2009/18

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Flash Flood Watercolour on paper 34 x 42 cms (13.4 x 16.5 ins) 2015

Boat Race Watercolour on paper 34 x 42 cms (13.4 x 16.5 ins) 2015

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Landscape with Thorns Acrylic on canvas 91.4 x 125.1 cms (36 x 49.2 ins) 2018

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Iris Head in Oval Watercolour on paper 32.5 x 47.5 cms (12.8 x 18.7 ins) 2018

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Departure Acrylic on canvas 120.7 x 119.4 cms (47.5 x 47 ins) 2018

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Derrick Greaves CV 1927 Born in Sheffield 1943-48 Apprenticed as a sign-writer 1948-52 Studied at the Royal College of Art 1952-54 Abbey Major Scholarships to study in Italy 1954-64 Taught part-time at St Martin’s School of Art, London 1956 Represented Britain at the Venice Biennale (with John Bratby, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith) 1957 Visited USSR. Awarded Gold Medal for painting at Moscow Youth Festival. Awarded prize at John Moore’s Exhibition, Liverpool 1960s Taught at Maidstone College of Art and Royal Academy Schools 1962 Awarded purchase prize in Belfast Open Painting Exhibition 1979 Visited Israel with nine other British artists to produce work for ‘Israel Observed’ project 1983-91 Head of Printmaking at Norwich School of Art Lives and works in Norfolk Selected Solo Exhibitions 2016 Derrick Greaves. Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich 2015 Derrick Greaves. The Psychiatrist’s Cat and Other Recent Paintings, James Hyman Gallery, London 2013 Derrick Greaves. All Blues, James Hyman Gallery, London 2012 Derrick Greaves. Milestones, James Hyman Gallery, London 2011 Flatworld. Recent Prints and Drawings by Derrick Greaves, James Hyman Gallery, London. Derrick Greaves. Paintings and Prints, School House Gallery, Norfolk. Derrick Greaves. Painting Beyond the Millennium, Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury 2010 Derrick Greaves. Nightingale and Other Recent Pictures, James Hyman Gallery, London 2008 Derrick Greaves: White Ground and Other Recent Paintings, James Hyman Gallery, London 2007 Derrick Greaves: From Kitchen-Sink to Shangri-La, James Hyman Gallery, London 2006 Pop Classical: Derrick Greaves Paintings from the 1970s, James Hyman Gallery, London 2005 Derrick Greaves: The Pleasures of Drawing, James Hyman Gallery, London 2003 Derrick Greaves: Paintings and Drawings 1952-2002, James Hyman Gallery, London

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Derrick Greaves: New Prints, School House Gallery, Norfolk 2002 Derrick Greaves: Six Decades of Painting, Wingfield Arts Centre, Wingfield, Suffolk 2000 Derrick Greaves: Collage Drawings, Chappel Gallery, Essex 1999 Derrick Greaves: Drawing for Paintings, School House Gallery, Norfolk 1997 Derrick Greaves, King of Hearts Gallery, Norwich. Derrick Greaves, Hart Gallery, London 1996 Derrick Greaves, Galerie Daniel Wahrenberger, Zurich, Switzerland 1992 Derrick Greaves, King of Hearts Gallery, Norwich 1986 Derrick Greaves: Forty from Ten, Loughborough and tour 1980 Derrick Greaves: Retrospective Exhibition of Prints 1969-1980, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery. Derrick Greaves, Fischer Fine Art, London Derrick Greaves: Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings 1953-1980, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield 1978 Derrick Greaves, Monika Kinley, London Derrick Greaves, City Gallery, Milton Keynes. Derrick Greaves, Cranfield Institute of Technology 1977 Derrick Greaves, Monika Kinley, London. Derrick Greaves, City Gallery, Milton Keynes 1976 Derrick Greaves, Monika Kinley, London. Derrick Greaves, City Gallery, Milton Keynes 1975 Derrick Greaves, Monika Kinley, London. Derrick Greaves, City Gallery, Milton Keynes 1973 Derrick Greaves, Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford. Derrick Greaves, Whitechapel Gallery, London. Derrick Greaves, Monika Kinley, London 1972 Derrick Greaves, Arts Council Gallery, Belfast. Derrick Greaves, David Hendricks Gallery, Dublin. Derrick Greaves, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1970 Derrick Greaves, Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford. Derrick Greaves, Galleria La Citta, Verona, Italy Derrick Greaves, Galleria La Citta, Padua, Italy 1969 Derrick Greaves, Institute of Contemporary Art, London 1963 Derrick Greaves, Zwemmer Gallery, London 1962 Derrick Greaves, Zwemmer Gallery, London 1960 Derrick Greaves, Zwemmer Gallery, London 1958 Derrick Greaves, Zwemmer Gallery, London 1955 Derrick Greaves, Beaux Arts Gallery, London 1953 Derrick Greaves, Beaux Arts Gallery, London

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Derrick in his Studio 2018 photograph Sarah Read

TRADITIONAL & CONTEMPORARY FINE ART Mandell’s Gallery, Elm Hill, Norwich NR3 1HN +44 (0)1603 626892 info@mandellsgallery.co.uk www.mandellsgallery.co.uk

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