Artist Statement
Modern artists paint what they feel about what they see.
As seen in Vincent van Gogh's emotive work.
Tony Woollard 2023
TONY WOOLLARD
In the late 1940s at Clayesmore School in Dorset, England, Tony learnt to paint with oil and watercolours under the excellent tutelage of N.A Scadding. He won many annual Clayesmore Art prizes and prizes at the London schools exhibitions.
In the 1950s Tony went on to study figure drawing under Iain Macnab at Heatherleys in Pimlico, London. Macnab was a master of line.
Tony's love of line learnt from Macnab has stayed with him ever since.
While at Heatherleys he saw an exhibition of Holbein's portrait drawings with their exquisite contour line (both thick and thin), a line that on its own, sculpted the solidity of the faces. This was a revelation for him. These two masters of line have always been an inspiration for him and particularly later in the 1990's , that same thick and thin line can be seen in his four books of 'Torso Drawings'.
He still owns a painting from Heatherleys period, that he exhibited in the 'Young Contemporaries' in the 1950s, it shows the formal structure that he still uses today. A structure that can be seen in Francis Bacon's work, and Howard Hodgkin's work, a frame within a frame controlling the picture plane.
The 'Young Contemporaries' was an annual exhibition started in 1949 for post graduate Art students . At first there was a selection committee. Later, in the 1970s, the students took over to judge the exhibits and the name was changed to 'New Contemporaries'. It has now changed yet again to 'Bloomberg New Contemporaries' and is still judged by past exhibiting students.
Why did Tony in the 1950s abandon his passion to study art and opt for a career in the film industry?
He had achieved considerable technical ability with paintings chosen by the selection committee and hung at the 'Young Contemporaries'. Although he wished to emulate the careers of the artists he so admired, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, he also wished to marry and bring up a family. He therefore planned that when he retired from a career designing film sets, where he used his visual talents of drawing and sketching, he would return to the painting and drawing he studied all those years ago. Which is exactly what he has done, with a deeper understanding of Art and history of Art. Designing film sets was always his second planned career and something he has enjoyed immensely, plus there's a family he loves, with two daughters both successful artists.
This website is catalogued retrospectively enabling one to understand how the series 'Torso Lines' developed, dominating his work from (1998) onwards.
WIDE BRUSH EXPRESSIONISM
After many years earning a living designing film sets ( architecture produced by the use of line, with set sketches designed with line and watercolour ), he retired in 1985, and returned as planned to his first love painting.
At first his reaction was to break away from the fine architectural line he had been using in his film work, and start a series of paintings using six inch brushes, much as the film scenic artists used for their backcloths. He called these works 'Wide Brush Expressionism'. Seeing these works, his daughters encouraged him to see the same broad brush work of Howard Hodgkin with his vibrant colours and wide brush framing. This was an exciting revelation for him, his whole colour range changed. Whereas in the past, he used the colours as seen, he now used colours to express his feelings.
He then abandoned the 'Wide Brush Framing' and returned to concentrate on the figurative line he had always loved, along with his 'Wide Brush Expressionism'.
TORSO LINES
All of Tony's works after (1998) are part of a series he calls 'Torso Lines'.
Firstly in 1998, he made pencil line drawings in an A4 book of two French plaster Torso models he owns, one Male one Female, drawn with the Holbein and Macnab line that had inspired him and the knowledge of anatomy learnt from Macnab all those years ago.
Inspired by these drawings, he continued on to draw more torsos from his imagination in four A4 books, firstly, single Torsos Male and Female, then Male and Female torso lines overlapping each other to form abstract patterns that combined to make new shapes and an enigma. He then went on to produce A4 colour sketches using these new shapes, inspired by various incidents in his life, more visceral than intellectual. Using these sketches he followed on by making human 'full -size paintings, cut out on wood, culminating in the series called "Picasso".
However, for him what is most important, is that although the 'Torso Lines' series is based on his own two classical Greek Torsos and works such as the 'Venus de Milo', and the 'Elgin Marbles', He also wants his Torsos to be a tribute to all the Amputees we have today, either from wars or accidents, they are beautiful like the ancient Greeks with their courage and fortitude.
PICASSO INSPIRED TORSO LINES
Why Picasso?
Walking out of the Picasso, exhibition 'Challenging the Past' at the National Gallery in 2009, where he had seen Picasso painting his version of classical works in his own style. Tony was immediately inspired to paint a series (2012-2013) using his double torso technique overlapping the lines of 'Old Master Torsos' with 'Modern Master Torsos'.
However the line is no longer thick and thin, it is now solid, a Picasso line. He cut out the boards to follow the drawing's shapes, which when hung proud off the wall by a couple of inches, brings a sculptural quality inspired by the original plaster casts and Rodin.
BLACK & WHITE TOGETHER - BLACK LIVES MATTER
FOUR SEASONS IN THE TIME OF COVID 19
This series of works done during the Covid 19 period from 2019 - 2022 where inspired by Tony's response & sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement, using his torso drawings and seen through the colour prism of the Four Seasons.
FOUR SEASONS AFTER MILTON AVERY
Once again using Tony's books of classical torso drawings as the genesis for these works and identifying with Milton Avery's use of the combination of painted expressionist backgrounds with drawn lines on top as seen in Avery's London exhibition in 2022.