THE PAINTING SCHOOL OF MONTMIRAL

Ken Marunowski - from USA

Ken is a much more experienced artist than Hilda and was searching to develop a personal style. After getting back home he wrote of his experience at the Painting School in the following words:

"My experience at the Painting School of Montmiral has taught me to slow down, to observe carefully, and to execute thoughtfully – and all this with respect not only to painting, but also to life itself.""Through careful study and informed practice, Francis's teaching clearly demonstrates that it is possible to fuse passion and the intellect, art and science."

David Gibson - fom England

David comes along with Di, but when he gets here he always gets very involved in some project or other. You might describe him as a "conceptual artist". David wrote a very long email about his visit. It is worth quoting almost all of it, for even the the 16 very sensitive drawings that he made (of which 12 are illustrated below) represent survivors from the widespread rape of the environment. They are very small but very well worth looking at. Here is what David wrote:

" It was three years since my sixth visit, and on this seventh time round I was wondering if perhaps the gilt would have come off the gingerbread by now, but far from it, I was again almost foundering, rather deliciously, within an hour under the impact of landscape, history, colour and light and the intense awareness that I had done very little painting or drawing at home in recent months. How on earth was I to put that all together in some sort of meaningful artistic engagement?
My first glimpse of enlightenment was that ALL those ingredients were both important and hopeful. I slowly remembered that I was not here  to “capture” anything for exhibition at home in order to justify my absence “on holiday” or to demonstrate my supposedly developing expertise. I was here to experience creative foundering and to see what responses were possible.  And if the whole view, or even the best view, was too grand a focus, perhaps a few sideways glances would give me the entrée I needed into this wonderland, and bring me back to a state of asking the right questions perhaps, but more particularly of abandoning all hope of foreseeing achievable goals and having the courage to step out into darkness in the midst of light.

Tools for this journey, as usual under Francis’ direction, were not to be so much practical tips about canvasses media or brushes, but everything that makes for thoughtful observation of object, of space, of relationships and most of all of what effect my last pencil line or brushstroke has had on the whole, because it is not possible to know any of this in advance. So nobody can tell me the “right” colour to apply in a given situation, only something approximately right, (or is it more precisely approximately wrong – a tantalisingly difficult concept which may be just what one is seeking?)

So I chose first a view I have explored before, underneath the fields of gold, where the strikingly blue stems of corn form a sort of imposed grid containing the wild splashes of colour of ?forgotten (certainly not cultivated) flowers reaching out for light and air.

The forsaken wild flowers which were more profuse than ever this year particularly around the verges where they lived under the constant threat of being mowed down or poisoned seemed to speak a lot about survival on the margins and perhaps in vivid microcosm represented the colour conflicts and engagements of the grander scene.

So my next project was to keep a small notebook of pencilled sketches of wild flowers that  caught my eye.

The theme of learning from looking at the margins or forgotten corners developed into studies of some rejected box clippings that fell almost at my feet as a local topiarist set to work to reveal  the “true” value of the box hedge as a mould for human fantasies. By juggling with colour matching and accurate versus distorted structure something seemed to start to emerge that seemed paradoxically to get closer to reality because perhaps more freely fantastic and uncontrolled.
Finally, following the idea of “moulding” I explored colour on the surface of  cardboard packing for wine bottles, leaving one such mould blank for any observer to project the colour that exists only in their own eye/brain.
If all this makes me a conceptual painter or even one verging on NeoDuchampianism is of little consequence. I had a wonderful fortnight with a great group of fellow-strugglers under the ever-caring and challenging watch of Francis who somehow contrives to give us the greatest possible experience of freedom – limited freedom. And that is surely the fundamental principle of creation."

Keith Williams - from Wales

Keith is an art school trained artist who was feeling in a bit of a cul de sac. He had come many years before for a similar reason. I leave him to put his story into his own words:

"I first arrived at Montmiral in 1991, and returned in 1992 and 1993. At that point I decided to take what I had learnt from Francis and to put the teaching into practice. For the next fourteen years I painted representational pictures, initially with vigour, but in the later years that energy faded away.

I returned to Montmiral in 2007 hoping to find again that enthusiasm for paint, but health reasons outside of my control made it difficult to concentrate. I regained some of the interest, but left feeling that I needed to try again. What I needed was to find a project which could be adapted for different locations and subjects. Since my first visit I have really enjoyed drawing with line and painting with colour, but what I wanted was to combine both.

In 2007, I left Montmiral having explored the mark making process using black and white with a variety of mediums. This year, having been told the customary expectation by Francis to go out and paint something which could then be discussed, black and white seemed a good starting point.

During the first week I explored line drawing and also painted with colour looking at distilling both independently to find the essence and then combining both into a painting. My enthusiasm had returned and a project had emerged.

In the second week, the second life drawing session took place, which totally transformed my project by taking it in new directions. Rather than distilling line and colour/tone independently it offered an additional new approach and many more possibilities to explore the abstract qualities. One drawing exercise made the greatest leap in my whole artistic understanding.

The colour theory talks with progressive colour mixing demonstration and the one to one talks with Francis confirmed my project direction and all fell into place. At the end of the course, all students exhibit some, or all, of their artistic productivity. I showed five studies which demonstrated my individual journey, which has been remarkable.

Returning home, I am drawing and painting; distilling the essence with a passion for, and love of paint.

Thanks for a memorable fortnight."

Below are the three works to which he refers: the "study in black and white", the "study in colour" and the confrontation between line (made without looking at the paper) and chiaroscuro, which so excited him.