Talks and TV Programmes

Qu Lei Lei  7th  February 2019

Qu lei Lei is a Chinese British artist whose paintings of the nude are unusual because of the fact that the nude is very rarely painted in traditional Chinese art. They are done in pen and ink and charcoal.. equisitely detailed and sensitive. This was a talk by Qu Lei Lei that was important to me because of the fact that I use bamboo pens and ink to do some of my paintings: for example Burnout. According to Qu Lei Lei, the final product is less important than the philosophy undergirding the art. Process is key. Thus for Qu Lei Lei what is crucial is not just the image but also the calligraphy and the storey behind the painting.  For Qu Lei Lei art is for politics not just for art itself. This is the difference between Eastern and Western art. Qy Lei Lei quotes both Jesus (‘By their fruit you will know them’) and Confucius who questioned the why, the why and the how of things. As I am keenly interested in art that is informed by an awareness of philosophy, this event was extremely meaningful to me.

Unstoppable: Sean Scully and the Art of Everything  BBC 2 April 2019

This was an interesting program because it documented the ability of people from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds to rise high in the art world if they have the drive and an original idea. Sean Scully grew up on the streets of Ireland in abject poverty, familiar with gang crime and violence. He is now the richest painter in the world. He has more than 50 exhibitions currently all over the world. People find his stripes ‘like mute eye music’ and ‘sounding boards of the soul’. They originated in a trip to Morocco where he was bombarded with stripes in all the colourful fabrics hanging from the market stalls. Stripe are everywhere in Islam because in Islam you cannot show the face of |God and so they use pattern. In his understanding ‘human beings need beauty. No-one can understand it but we do’. Scully believes in the supernatural power of his painting; he believes they have the power to change things in the world, that his paintings have a mystical quality to them things that contain the force of good, that can change the world for the better. Here we see the philosophy underlying his art, something that has always been of keen interest to me. Some of the photographs I have presented are from an exhibition that Geraint took us to in October 2018 where he first introduced us to the work of Sean Scully.