Painters’ painters

Varied exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery looking at the work of nine contemporary artists specialising in painting.

If you read my blog regularly you may have realised I have a bit of a thing against bad, sloppy contemporary painting so to stay positive I’m going to focus on the two artists I liked best in this show. You can take my usual complaints as read about some of the others. It was a shame that all the artists were men partially as there were some interesting women painters on show on the top floor but these turned out to be left over from a previous show.

I liked Raffi Kalenderian in the first room who has a good eye for using pattern as part of the work. At the end of the room was a very striking work of zebras against a field of trees and standing in a meadow of flowers. The whole this was a study in stripes. I liked the fact he paints from life for his figure studies. My favourite of his pictures  was a study of a hotel bedroom but the picture was dominated by the pattern of the curtains and bedding.

My favourite artist in the show was David Brian Smith who seemed to be building up images with patterns both in the composition and in the painting technique. Evidently he bases his work on old family photographs plus an image from a newspaper found under the floorboards of his mother’s house. I loved the series of pictures of a shepherd with a flock of sheep and a dog. I liked the way the sheep were made up of tiny flicks of different coloured paint in a rather pointillist style and the way some of the clouds in the sky were striped. And I have found my second blue sheep in art, the first being in the Duncan Grant mural in Lincoln Cathedral.

Now I do need a moan! I had gone to the gallery the day before only to find it was shut to the public as it was being used for an event. Fair enough I should have checked as this had happened to me before there but you don’t expect to have to check if a gallery you go to often is open in specific days. When I went back the next day two of the galleries of the show were closed with on reason given and no indication when, if ever, they might reopen. This meant you couldn’t see nearly a quarter of the show. Ok it was free but if I’m going to an exhibition I want to be able to see the full narrative of the show.

Closes on 28 February 2017.

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