In writing about Steve Lopes’s works, there has been an opportunity for me to bring together some thoughts, along with others’ perceptions, of what makes a painter and about some of the problems artists have to surmount through their careers. It will be up to the viewer to decide if these words are a useful addition for responding to these works.
Christopher Neve, in his book entitled ‘Unquiet Landscape’, discusses how artists talk about their work. Neve offers an insight that will, I hope, add to our seeing of Lopes’s paintings. He writes: “painting is a risky process precisely because of the trials and errors and intuitive revisions that this kind of inarticulate thought involves. But the truth strikes you, when you see it, as unmistakable because it represents not just a way of seeing landscape but a state of mind. It is such half-formed ideas that painters will sometimes discuss because their thoughts are at an angle to the pictures themselves and do not impinge too much upon them, painting is a process of finding out.”
But for my ‘angled approach’, I cannot think of a better angle than to consider the thoughts of the late and greatly missed curator, Nick Waterlow, who formulated ‘seven points’ for what makes a great art director. Although not directly aimed at painting or painters, there is insight in this which could help in finding out what makes a painter, and may also help in establishing what constitutes an audience.
A Curator’s Last Will and testament.
Nick Waterlow:
1. passion; 2. An eye of discernment; 3. An empty vessel; 4. An ability to be uncertain; 5. Belief in the necessity of art and artists; 6. A medium – bringing a passionate and informed understanding of works of art to an audience in ways that will stimulate, inspire, question; 7. Making possible the altering of perception. Also, to think about some of what has to be negotiated as an artist, one sees the ease that some have fallen into, often when young, the ant-lion pit of fame and, worse still, notoriety (being famous for being famous). To not chase this phantom takes an amount of wisdom. The very fact of Lopes surviving the fickleness of the art world and being able to continue with a vision of where he wishes to go, and the courage that it takes, is one of the markings that are inherent in his approach.
Of course, we also see in Lopes’s works the emulating of those artists that have enticed and inspired him in the past: the Scottish artist, Peter Howson, and in Australia, Peter Booth. But in the end it is the viewers’ initial responses that are of importance.
Responding to Lopes’s works and watching the process has been both instructive and pleasurable. To be critical when we have been in his studio together is difficult, but Lopes’s openness and passion for painting are inherent in these works and will make for the viewer and buyer an ongoing valuable experience.
Stella Downer Fine Art
July 17 to August 18, 2012
Sydney
Inchoate Road, 2011, oil on board, 34 x 90cm
Midnight to midnight, 2012, oil on canvas, 110 x 110cm
Courtesy the artist and Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney