Foreword
In ancient mythology the nine muses, young virgins all, were the offspring of Zeus and Mnemosyne. They were the collective inspiration for all the arts and the driving force of those pursuing eternal beauty. Their importance lives on in our own word ‘museum’, which means literally the place where the muses live. If the Greek oracle had been consulted as to the actual appearance of these inspiring girls, the description that came back through the mouthpiece of the ingeniously contrived sculpture which delivered the verdict would undoubtedly have been close to what we see now in Hamish Blakely’s paintings of his wife, Gail. Curiously, there was no muse for painting although, if there had been, she must surely have looked like this. These paintings are celebrations of admiration, respect and devotion, all other ‘real’ considerations having been excluded. Narrative is usually a forceful element in Blakely’s painting, where what has happened before and after the painted scene are left open to speculation. Part of the enjoyment of looking at such pictures derives from deducing what has led to the tension of the depicted moment. But here, in ‘Muse’, figures are enclosed, isolated outside of all time and beyond all worldly, material concerns.We ask ourselves ‘What are these figures thinking?’, and the only narrative resulting from the question is the invention of the viewer’s willing imagination. Blakely is a knowledgeable painter and he comes to his subject well versed in the traditions of his genre. It is fitting that the artist is aware of the distinguished history in which he works, for there has been no more constant subject in the male-dominated history of art than the naked female presented for universal adoration. It is the form in which men celebrate their attraction and enslavement to women. And there is surely no clearer passage into the artist’s fundamental feelings and beliefs than in paintings of his wife.Those well-versed in the history of depicted nudity, fromVelasquez, Rembrandt, Delacroix and Etty to Degas, Alma-Tadema, Russell Flint and Lucian Freud, will
recognise in these paintings distant echoes of the Old Masters, as their lessons of pose, drapery and fruity colour, not to mention their use of mythological camouflage, are absorbed into Hamish Blakely’s personal vision. Particularly strong is his appreciation of the balanced composition so important in pictures where any jarring ingredient will undermine the all-important mood. His developed appreciation of sculptural form, and in particular of making complex poses appear natural, is achieved by catching in shafts of bright sunlight, figures in otherwise gloomy interiors: thus is the drama of these pictures intensified. Such techniques come naturally to good painters and scarcely need pointing out because, as Sickert wrote, “If the subject of a picture could have been stated in words there had been no need to paint it”. Hamish’s wife is his still life, his exhibit, his living statue, his idol of secular worship. As the 19th century illustrator and designerWalter Crane once famously declared: “Nothing in art is of any worth unless done for love.” Never more true than here. Sometimes her mood is warm and beguiling, while in other guises she is cooler and more distant. In some accounts she grows naturally like a flower from a mound of drapery, while in the next she is Marvell’s teasingly coy mistress. Elsewhere, she is the femme fatale, the forbidden fruit whose attractions are tinged with danger. I am heartened that during an age in which artistic conventions are routinely, thoughtlessly cast aside to allow the most abysmal charlatans free passage, and where the muses are more often those of Success, Notoriety and Money rather than Art and Beauty, there is an artist still prepared to take on with conviction, skill and accomplishment such a difficult conventional subject.
David Lee Art Critic & Editor of The Jackdaw
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