his work shows dawn and twilight, the most poetic times of day. Like Durer he observed nature closely showing a naturalistic style and yet his vision is nostalgic, almost dreamlike, and serene.
L. S. LOWRY
Known for his industrial landscapes, Lowry’s works are very familiar to those who grew up in the North of England. I certainly was aware of Lowry’s ‘matchstick men’ before I understood the concept of landscape painting. See Industrial Landscape, 1955
Although his works were imaginary, they showed panoramic cityscapes, which contained recognisable places such as Stockport Viaduct. He gave a generalised impression of urban environments, dominated by the less attractive city elements such as smoking chimneys, and industrial wastelands.
His earlier work was similar to the Impressionists but without the light which made them brooding in atmosphere, the people like worker ants, faceless, almost non-human. Often described as ‘lonely landscapes’, they were empty, desolate views of Cumbrian hills, grey and bleak landscape.
He said “my ambition was to put the industrial scene on the map, because nobobdy had done it – nobody had done it seriously²”. His pictures unsettle the myth of the land of hope and glory, it’s a commentary on how the wealthy depend on the ceaseless labour of the poor, the human condition of repeated work until death. This is shown through the rigid, faceless figures, the huge dominating factories, drab housing and bleak atmosphere. Yet throughout the bleak imagery there are flashes of detail, bright colour, flowers in a window, or someone waving or whistling, a sudden break in the routine.
Born in the Midlands, he is known for painting the urban estate where he grew up in 1970’s Britain. His style is highly detailed and naturalistic, but his subject matter is one of English suburbia, the mundane and the overlooked. It’s a nostalgic view, looking back on a simpler time, no people are present but we somehow still feel their presence. “To me, they are teeming with human presences. The people I grew up with, family, passersby, they are all in there somewhere, embedded in the paintings³.”
It’s a landscape most are familiar with, evoking a remembered experience of what it is to be a working class teenager, waiting around. His works captures memories and moments from adolescent life.
He reinforces this feeling of nostalgia with his choice of paint, his favourite medium is Humbrol enamel paint, the very thought of which conjures up images of teens concentrating on getting that Airfix plane just so, sitting in their bedroom of a terraced house. Almost photographic in style, the enamel paint gives the paintings a unique flavour of a particular era yet raises it from a purely representational state, its old fashioned but somehow timeless at the same time. He elevates this bland suburban places into something more important, in the same way that Lorrain elevated beautiful landscapes from the background of historical genre paintings.
For the exhibition “George Shaw: My Back to Nature”, Shaw spent a lot of time in the National Gallery studying the old masters. He studied the clash of cultures, linking classical stories to the modern world and religion.
Painting his home town of Coventry he said, “the work came out of an abandonment of plans. It was not just about going back to a place physically, it was a return to a metaphorical place where I existed as a positive, passionate adolescent, unhampered by the history of my ideas or other people’s, a place where I did what I did because it grew from me – and didn’t question it. If you can’t find yourself in your own backyard, you’re not going to find yourself in the Serengeti, are you? So for me, it was taking those clichés of epiphany and the sublime and putting them in a place where great thoughts aren’t rumoured to happen³.”
His work is often described as sentimental, but are devoid of people, perhaps they are more nostalgic, although as he says “I don’t know why sentimentality has to be a negative quality. What I look for in art are the qualities I admire or don’t admire 