Pitch 35
Ian Mowforth
In his current body of work Mowforth is investigating edges. The meeting of colours and forms against one another in a landscape setting. His interest in the changing light and the textures of seasons continues. Mowforth’s exploration of calligraphic mark making is paramount. The building up of surfaces and textures with or without the addition of mediums in the paint allows him to really begin to create his own sense of place. Many artists have explored this idea and he continues to push this idea further using contemporary/appropriate technology to facilitate its making and development.
If Turner or Constable had access to an iPhone and a printer, Mowforth thinks they may well have been generating the staring points for pictures in the same way that he chooses to. Mowforth takes dozens of images that he can collage together in the studio in order to reexamine the scene that had sparked the initial interest. He spends many hours referring to the motif as he recreates his own version in the studio. He doesn’t copy the image mark for mark but uses the original as an initial way of arranging the positive and negative forms on to the surface before the physical act of painting takes over.
Mowforth doesn’t draw out and paint in. He generates the structure and composition within the painting itself. It grows organically from initial compositional markers. He generally paints onto a coloured ground on the smoothest oil primed linen. This surface is soft and enables to quality of the paint to create the marks Mowforth needs to make the space., like visual clues that you find in the original scene. The paint sits up on the surface of the canvas and the edges of the paint catch the light which allows him to begin to create a visual tonal reality. Because of the contrasting coloured ground; the upper most marks on the surface allow the painting be read as a 3D space. This is not something of Mowforth’s own invention but is a simple trick that has been used by artists for centuries. As the work develops he is aware that this optical bounce is fundamental to his practice.
Mowforth has always, since childhood, been intrigued by how the hands can make marks that are meaningful even if seemingly made arbitrarily. The way an artist draws within their work is often talked about in terms of their style. Mowforth thinks of it as handwriting. His own handwriting looks like calligraphy and has developed over decades and the way he uses his hands in painting echoes this. All endeavours feed in to the results.