Award-winning artist PHOEBE DICKINSON set herself the ultimate landscape painting challenge. ROSEMARY WAUGH finds out why
Phoebe Dickinson’s portrait The Cholmondeley Children at Houghton Hall cut a striking figure in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2018 BP Portrait Award exhibition. Painted at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, the image is a classic portrait of aristocratic children in a stately home setting. Only, it’s not. The large off-centre doorway and half-cropped wall decorations give the composition the quality of an opportunistically snapped photograph, as do the hands-in-pockets attitude of the kids pictured. The subject is almost as traditional as they come, but Dickinson’s take on it is relaxed and modern, and it wears its art-historical references as nonchalantly as the older boy’s crumpled shirt.
Frequently commissioned to paint members of Britain’s aristocracy, portraiture has become Dickinson’s calling card. But despite the obvious talent she has for the genre, her working practice has long extended beyond. From early November, the Tessa Packard Showroom in Chelsea, London, will be home to a collection of new landscape paintings created during an intrepid year-long trip around the world. “I had been working in London doing portraits for more than 10 years and, as brilliant as commissions can be, I was craving some creative freedom and time to experiment,” says Dickinson. Accompanied by her husband and 18-month-old child, the trip started in South Africa before moving on to France, Iceland, America and Italy. It culminated in a week at Mont Sainte-Victoire in France, a stone’s throw from where Paul Cézanne spent his final moments and captured his own moody, strong-hued landscapes.
Denne historien er fra November 2018-utgaven av Artists & Illustrators.
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Denne historien er fra November 2018-utgaven av Artists & Illustrators.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Still life IN 3 HOURS
Former BP Portrait Award runner-up FELICIA FORTE guides you through a simple, structured approach to painting alla prima that tackles dark, average and light colours in turn
Movement in composition
Through an analysis of three masterworks, landscape painter and noted author MITCHELL ALBALA shows how you can animate landscape composition with movement
Shane Berkery
The Irish-Japanese artist talks to REBECCA BRADBURY about the innovative concepts and original colour combinations he brings to his figurative oil paintings from his Dublin garden studio
The Working Artist
Something old, something new... Our columnist LAURA BOSWELL has expert advice for balancing fresh ideas with completing half-finished work
Washes AND GLAZES
Art Academy’s ROB PEPPER introduces an in-depth guide to incorporating various techniques into your next masterpiece. Artwork by STAN MILLER, CHRIS ROBINSON and MICHELE ILLING
Hands
LAURA SMITH continues her new four-part series, which encourages you to draw elements of old master paintings, and this month’s focus is on capturing hands
Vincent van Gogh
To celebrate The Courtauld’s forthcoming landmark display of the troubled Dutch master’s self-portraits, STEVE PILL looks at the stories behind 10 of the most dramatic works on display
BRING THE drama
Join international watercolour maestro ALVARO CASTAGNET in London’s West End to paint a dramatic street scene
Serena Rowe
The Scottish painter tells STEVE PILL why time is precious, why emotional responses to colour are useful, and how she finds focus every day with the help of her studio wall
Bill Jacklin
Chatting over Zoom as he recovers from appendicitis, the Royal Academician tells STEVE PILL about classic scrapes in New York and his recent experiments with illustration
