Colour and precision from Orient in Warwickshire
Julie Chamberlain explores a new exhibition influenced by cinematography and Japanese costume.
 |
| Artificial Intelligence, oil on canvas, copyright Pip Dickens |
Colourful paintings with the varied influences of Japanese kimono
designs and cinematic films make up a new exhibition in Warwickshire.
Screen is the title of the exhibition at Rugby Art
Gallery & Museum by Pip Dickens, using its several meanings,
including film, and something used to obscure things, or mark off space.
There are a few paintings from her Shibusa series of works, which feature oil paints on a handy dyed and washed canvas.
Using
what looks like a raking effect, similar to that used on Japanese
gardens, works such as Composition #4 look like they could be kimonos.
Composition #7 has blobs of paint as interlopers in the pattern.
There
are also some amazingly detailed and precise Japanese Katagani stencils
on show from Pip’s own collection, which are used to print fabric for
kimonos in Japan, apparently made by highly-trained Living National
Treasures as they are known for their expertise.
Kan
no Uchi, (The Cold Time), is the largest in the Shibusa series, and is
a lovely big abstract oil work featuring different colours and what could be snow storms over a landscape.
 |
| The Last Cells - Final Cut, oil on canvas, copyright Pip Dickens |
Works
that use more of the cinematic influences include The Last Cells,
featuring rectangles of paint all over the canvas, like bits of clipped,
edited film.
Split
Screen features two sides of striped materials similar to the earlier
kimono-fabric works, which look like they could close in on each other.
Hikari To Kage (Light and Shadow) is my personal favourite, the top and
bottom black swathes of colour, with the central panel from left to
right a curtain of different reds and pinks, with what looks like sun
from a window shining across it. The impact is very cinematic, and dramatic.
Artificial
Intelligence has a mix of influences, and features an intense blue
apparently used in the “blue fairy” scene in the Spielberg film of the
same name, and Superimposition-Opalesque features a subaquatic feel to
it, with what looks like fronds of underwater plants growing up from the
bottom. When
the Stars Fall is also quite dramatic and cinematic, with a lot of
blackness and what looks like stars falling across a purple background.
It’s an exhibition featuring a number of abstract works showing interesting and well-thought out influences.
...........
My website: www.pip-dickens.com
...........
My website: www.pip-dickens.com
