Author: Michael Rosenblum

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The Art Blog

From Sawmill to Sculpture – Richard Fox 

Most of us, at one time or another, have dreamt of completely changing our lives, tossing out everything, starting again and following a personal passion.  Few of us ever do that. The prospect is too frightening, and so for most of us, it remains a dream.  For Richard Fox, it became a reality.

Richard makes a living as a sculptor and artist. Selling work through interior designers and galleries that exhibit at shows such as the British Art Fair and London Art Fair. His work sells to both private and corporate clients and has been shipped to many parts of the world. But unlike many artists, he came to the craft late in life – a move which required passion and energy on his part.

 Richard originally worked in forestry, landscaping and agriculture. He then spent many years working at a sawmill where he helped develop a workshop, employing seven people, making timber products from gates to summer houses to oak-framed garages. A major part of Richard’s work was working alongside customers designing and realizing their ideas.

“That’s how I made my living,” he says.

Then something happened that would completely change his life: a visit to the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St. Ives. “There was one particular sculpture there… named Pierced Form (Epidauros) 1960………it had a real emotional effect on me….and I think renewed my imagination and a passion. I realised I needed to change my approach to life and work and it would hopefully be through making sculpture and painting … that might create a focal point for people to meditate and ponder on…..and even have the same effect as Hepworth’s sculpture had on me.”

It took Richard nearly two years to develop his sculpture. During that time he carried on the design work to pay his way and helped train someone to take over his job. Gradually spending more hours working on the sculpture until finally taking the plunge, leaving the sawmill, and working full time on sculpture and painting.

“It was a lot of work for those two years, but, I was lucky in that after being asked to exhibit at Art in Action, Waterperry my work was seen by a gallery Jenna Burlingham Fine Art and they asked me to exhibit with them. My work sold really well and in time started to work in bronze and marble as well as wood. This has led on to being asked to exhibit with other galleries and has meant I have managed to make a living.”

Richard attended Burford School and has lived with his wife in Milton under Wychwood for the last seven years.

 Richard has three children with his first partner as well as helping to bring up her two children, he also has four grandchildren.

 His wife, now, Jennifer Newman is a full-time artist. Richard says “ I think my wife and I work well together, an understanding of what goes into creating and selling artwork and supporting each other in all that  involves.”

Richard realized early on that life as an artist can involve working by yourself a lot and this is one of the reasons he and his wife found and rented a suitable studio space, not just for them, but developed it as a space for other artists to work and to have shared space to show and create an artists community. It is called Wicote Arts in Wilcote Riding near Finstock. It has been running for 9 years. At the moment 18 artists use the space and recently they have started a program for artists in residence.

Richard now in his late fifties has started to make his days physically a little easier by working on sculpture in the mornings and then painting in the afternoon and over the last eighteen months has taken up ceramics which he does in a studio he built in his garden.

You can learn more about Richard Fox’s work at his website – http://www.richardfox-sculpture.com

To learn more about Wilcote Arts, and to see the work that the members of the cooperative produce, check out their website at:  https://wilcoteart.wordpress.com

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The Art Blog

The Part-Time Artist

There is hardly anyone who is not familiar with The Girl With the Pearl Earring, painted by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1665.

A CNN survey listed it as one of the world’s most recognized paintings. It has been the subject of poetry, literature, social movements and more.  In in 2014 the English street artist Banksy reproduced the painting as a mural in Bristol, incorporating an alarm box in place of the pearl earring and calling the artwork Girl with a Pierced Eardrum.

In 2013, it was made into a feature film starring Scarlett Johannsen as Griet, as servant working in the home of Vermeer, played by Colin Firth, and the subject of the painting. 

What makes Vermeer interesting for us is that he was not a full-time artist. Rather, he worked as an art dealer and only painted when he had a chance.  This is very much like so many of the artists that we represent here.  Art is a passion, and only if you are lucky, is it a full time profession. But that does not prevent it from producing great works of art – and, I think, as a passion, it probably enhances the work even more.

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The Art Blog

Portrait of the Artist: Jo McGrath

This weekend, we drove up to the Lake District to meet up with artist Jo McGrath.

We first encountered Jo when we saw her on the television.  Countryfile, a popular BBC program did a profile of her.  We were so taken with her drawings of the local Herdwick sheep, done with charcoal and pigments taken from old slate mines nearby that we bought one for ourselves. Today, it hangs in our garden room

She lives at Yew Tree Farm, Coniston, with her husband Jon Watson, where they farm their 800+ Herdwick sheep and 30 Belted Galloway Cows, as well as various other assorted animals.

She says “I’m a professional artist, specialising in animal paintings, much like Yew tree Farm’s former owner Beatrix Potter.”

We were so impressed with her Herdwick that we commissioned a 6’ long hare, also done in charcoal, and hanging in our home as well.

Along with doing her own artwork, Jo also gives art lessons. We were up in Coniston because we gave our friend Anne Davies a day’s art lessons with Jo at the farm. 

We’ll be showing Jo’s work at the gallery this fall, as well as adding her work to our online catalogue. If you’d like to get in touch with her directly, she can be reached at penroo@me.com.

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The Art Blog

The Art of Photography

WAVE by PF Bentley

For my birthday a few months ago, my wife Lisa gave me an art gallery.

Admittedly, it’s not your usual birthday gift, like a pair of cashmere socks. You can wear the socks or just put them in the drawer. An art gallery, you have to run.

Now, I know nothing about owning or running an art gallery, and precious little about the art world in general, so I am starting from scratch.

When you set out to write a book they always say, “write something you know something about.” I figured the same rule probably applies to running an art gallery. I may not know much about art, but I do know something about photography.

I have spent my life starting and running media companies. One of the first media companies I started was called Video New International. At one point I had 102 VJs or MMJs working for me, reporting from all over the world. I sold 51% of the company to The New York Times and it became New York Times Television.

My initial investor in VNI was a man named Nick Nicholas. At that time, he was the Chairman and CEO of Time/Life, which later became Time/Warner. Nick introduced me to all the photographers at both Life and Time, and many of them became my video journalists. They taught me about how to make compelling visual images.

For most of human history, if you wanted to reproduce a scene or create a portrait, you needed a painter. That was the only way to create visual images. If you go to a museum like The Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, you’ll see some of the greatest paintings and painters in the world. Their work was technically perfect — they reproduced in oil what they saw.

In 1539, when Henry VIII was contemplating marrying Anne of Cleves, he sent Hans Holbein, the court painter to do a portrait of Anne so that he could see what she looked like. Today, Henry would just go to her Instagram page.

Here is Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII. Note the extraordinary detail — the jewels, the furs, the brocade.

The role of the painter and the idea of using paints and canvas to capture images and reality were crushed with the advent of photography in the late 19th century. Suddenly, this new piece of technology could do what painters had done for thousands of years, only better, faster and cheaper.

But the arrival of photography also changed what painting meant. Liberated from the need to simply reproduce the world perfectly, painters expanded their work, creating art that now reflected far more than mere perfect reproduction, but capture emotion, passion and pain. Doubtless Henry VIII would have had Lucien Freud executed. Last year, one of his portraits sold for $29 million.

But now the iPhone is doing to photographers what the camera did to painters — obviating the old need for professional photographers that simply capture reality. More photographs are uploaded to Instagram every second than were created in the entire 19th Century. 95 million photos every day. If you spent one second looking at each photo on Instagram, it would take you three years to look at one day’s worth of photos.

What are professional photographers to do? Photo magazines like Life are dead. Even photo magazines like National Geographic have shed most of their contract photographers.

But as the invention of the camera allowed painting to evolve to a higher art form, so too, I think, does the smart phone.

Which brings me back to my little art gallery.

Getting in touch with the many great photographers I have had the privilege to work with, I believe that they can and do create not just representational pictures, but increasingly, great works of art in their own right. You see PF Bentley’s WAVE photo above. PF was for many years Time Magazine’s White House photographer, but now he lives in Hawaii and creates, in my opinion, fine art.

Below is a photograph by Bob Krist, formerly of National Geographic. Look at the power of the image — as good as John Constable. Perhaps better. That’s right, this is a photo.

ImageM 033

To me, this is the future of photography — a fine art in its own right. I am going to be carrying the work of PF Bentley, Bob Krist and many others in my new gallery in Milton under Wychwood.

Come by.