Gaps - Spain 2019-2021
In 2019, at the SWAc AGM, Robert Mountjoy gave an illustrated talk about his work and described how the two-decade obsession with small intense still-life paintings had developed. In December of that year, he planned an exhibition of these paintings with Michael Carter, the photographer. The painter’s contribution was to be 21 of these still-life paintings. The exhibition created an opportunity to see and assess the work all together but in a different context. In his talk Mountjoy confessed he felt he had maybe taken this figurative approach as far as he could and was thinking of ‘moving on’.
Subsequently, he started a new sketchbook and filled it with small collages made from cut paper, scraped with layers of paint which were creased, crumpled and painted over again. He cut these coloured and distressed sheets into irregular rectangles with convex sides and reassembled them as small intimate collages. His fascination with the coming together of distinct forms, previously exploited in the still life series, was now being celebrated in a more abstract way. The ‘gaps’ between the forms became the focus, hence the names given to paintings in this series.
Right: Gap 29 - Spain 2019. Acrylic on Canvas Board, 61 X 61 cms.
Please scroll down to view the drawings and resulting paintings
In September 2019, Mountjoy took an unscheduled trip to Spain, visiting Andalucía and its historic sites. He took a sketchbook and a camera and came back full of new ideas, minimalist forms and textures, but most of all colours—earth reds - intense and bleached out, with deep yellows and dusty grey blues.
Please scroll down to see the on location sketches and then the reworked drawings. Paintings follow.
The sketches were scaled up and reworked in the studio before he spent some weeks playing with figurative landscapes based on the sketches … but felt this was not producing anything new or exciting. These were discarded as somewhat predictable. Looking back through his photographs, he found a batch where he had accidentally nudged camera settings to a wide angle and continued to shoot before noticing the mistake. The resulting images showed views through narrow streets from one plaza to another with ‘barrel’ distortion… and these resonated with some abstract collages he had been experimenting with.
The artist adapted and scaled up some of his collage/sketches; scanning some and reworking them digitally in the hot dry colours and textures recalled from the travels in Spain. Moving on to HDF or canvas boards, he painted in layers of colour and texture over hard edged forms with contrasting gaps. He showed two of the first paintings in the Penwith Gallery, St Ives, with the South West Academy 2020 Exhibition. He destined another four to the 21 Group Exhibition that year, also at Penwith. The colours became more intense as the series continued and the stripped-down forms, less architectural. Mountjoy showed three of the later paintings in this sequence in the SWAc Reflection 2020 Exhibition. He then showed an additional four paintings with the 21 Group at the Limekiln Gallery, Calstock from April to June 2021, two at the Artizan Gallery in Torquay and six more at the September 2021 Exhibition in St Ives.
Please scroll down to see the paintings.
The Artizan Gallery showed a collection of eighteen of the paintings from this series in May 2020 with artists: Sally Baldwin and Katie Jamieson.
Through the first Coronavirus ‘Lockdown’ Mountjoy produced a series of VLOGs recording his progress on these paintings. The last of these of these was posted on 6th June 2020. Please use the link below:
Robert Mountjoy Corona Vlog 11. Posted on 6th June 2020
The Gap Series of 40 paintings in acrylic on primed board or canvas board vary in size form 25 X 25 cms - 90 x 90 cms.
Video of exhibition at Artizan, Lucius Street, Torquay with Katie Jamieson and Sally Baldwin,