Outstanding trio
Andrew Lambirth
George Rowlett — Paintings 2005 Art Space Gallery, 84 St Peter’s Street, N1 (020 7359 7002), until 4 June Robert Dukes — paintings and drawings Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, W1 (020 7734 7984), until 3 June Ivon Hitchens — Nudes Jonathan Clark Fine Art, 18 Park Walk, SW10 (020 7351 3555), until 11 June George Rowlett’s new paintings have wonderfully tousled, wind-rucked surfaces, the paint stirred and whipped up in moving emulation of the effects of the elements on water and landscape — his principal subjects. He paints the Thames and the seashore of east Kent; he also records the passage of the seasons on the landscape around Deal where he has a studio. In his latest solo exhibition, the groundfloor gallery of Art Space is dominated by a large and splendid painting called ‘Ramsgate from the Tidal Flats, Pegwell Bay, January’. The pigment is heaped on with spatulas and fingers (Rowlett has given up using brushes) in great joyous horizontal swathes of pink, grey, mauve blue and lilac above a rusty-russet ground, liberally overlaid with dribbles and trails and flicks of paint, which bear witness to the excitement of its application. Every inch of the painted surface is activated, alive with light and rapturous in celebration of natural beauty.
Downstairs, painting after painting holds the wall with superb authority. Look at the broad luscious strokes which make up ‘Rape to Ripple Church, Weather Changing’: the flowering rapeseed is literally a knockout. The predominantly green and blue ‘Across East Wear Bay to the Warren, Folkestone’ is succinctly fired up by a passage of red and yellow at bottom right. A view of Margate is more contemplative, another towards Ramsgate is all surging pink cloud. A large painting of snow is full of daring colour. Rowlett is inventive and assured, breaking new ground in subject matter (a couple of paintings of a dead thrush have been added to his poignant still-life repertoire of animal skulls) as well as in painthandling.
The titles are descriptive and lengthy. For instance: ‘Winter, Low Tide at Greenwich, Pontoon, Dolphin and Cormorants from Primrose Wharf’. You could get more precise than that, but it wouldn’t fit in the catalogue. The titling helps to focus the way the viewer looks and deciphers — drawing attention to the cormorants on the right of the picture, sitting on a wooden pile, for instance — though I’d say the powerful surface movement in this rich, dark picture owes something to the Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s masterpiece in the National Gallery, ‘Lake Keitele’. I’m glad that Rowlett tells us that his maelstrom painting ‘Westminster Bridge, Bubbling Clouds’ contains ‘Thoughts of Hiroshige’, it makes it slightly easier to attune to its wildness.
This exhibition marks another move forward by an already impressive artist: Rowlett just gets better and better. For the quality of the work, his prices are remarkably competitive, and he deserves all the success he is currently achieving.
Over in the West End, Robert Dukes (born 1965) is enjoying similar good fortune at Browse & Darby. A pupil of Euan Uglow, Dukes has demonstrated in various group shows (The Discerning Eye and the RA Summer Exhibition, mainly) that he has forged an independent vision of considerable skill and sensitivity. This is overwhelmingly confirmed by his first solo exhibition, beautifully hung by the artist himself and very nearly a sell-out.
Dukes is essentially a still-life painter, his approach rooted in close observation under controlled conditions. His biggest problems are with movement in space, and making forms legible. The way twigs or fruit move through real space somehow has to be translated into a convincing two-dimensional existence on the picture plane. Quince, squash, the quarters of an apple or wild rosehips in turn become the focus of the artist’s scrutiny and urge to pictorial problem-solving. What is remarkable about his paintings is that they look so full of life and vigour even though subjected to such strict procedural disciplines.
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