Try to find some information on the work John Virtue produced while associate artist in residence at the National gallery. Look for examples to use as inspiration for your own ideas and discuss.

John Virtue is a landscape painter who was the Associate Artist in residence at the National Gallery between 2003 and 2005. His work is described as being between abstraction and figuration; relating closely to Turner and Constable, whom Virtue admires enormously as well as the Dutch and Flemish landscapes of Ruisdael, Koninck and Rubens.

Virtue works from the landscape of where he happens to be living. Immediately before he moved to London, he had been living in South Devon, using the landscape of the Exe estuary as his subject. Working solely in black and white, his paintings are solely executed on canvas, using white acrylic paint, black ink and shellac.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  John Virtue, Preparatory sketches – views of London

Virtue works in monochrome because he feels that using colour would refer him back to Constable or Turner and he doesn’t want to paint in those styles. Thinking about it, I understand what he means; I often make monochromatic pieces that lose their place if I add any colour, however minimal.

The work he completed for the National Gallery, to me has a ‘wartime/industrial’ feel about it; reminding me of black and white films in which London was a setting – they are quite haunting.

Some of his more recent works include a series called ‘The Sea‘ which were exhibited at the SCVA, Norwich. These depict the sea during his stay on the Norfolk coast.

 

http://scva.ac.uk/art-and-artists/exhibitions/john-virtue-the-sea

Even knowing that these are painted, I can’t help but be reminded of the white chalk on black boards of Tacita Dean and her series  – Roaring Forties: Seven Boards in Seven Days 1997. I see a similarity there in the movement of the sea and waves.

https://rosartsiteblogblog.wordpress.com/category/study-visits-research/