Wrestling with an angel, oil on linen, 52cm X 40cm 2023
There’s a struggle being played out against the purple violet ground.
I remember seeing a remarkable painting back in the 80s by Gauguin – Vision after the Sermon 1888, at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Gauguin was entering a new phase in his work. For me, it seems that he is between worlds, which is revealing, as he is trying out new things, taking risks. Disenchanted with Impressionism and enthusiastic to pursue more archaic and primitive forms. Inspired by Japanese woodblock printing from Hiroshige to Hokusai, he developed the idea of a non-naturalistic landscape.
This painting has stayed with me, and somehow, I am reviewing it because something is connected that, of course, has nothing to do with the specifics in my work. Rather, it is inspired by the nugget of focus in the top right-hand corner of the physical fight of Jacob and the angel and the process of painting. The composition, zigzags, is split by a diagonal branch separating the Breton women, bibbed in white caps set against a cadmium red field. I admire it as a working painting that prompts something more formal. It’s a painter’s painting, showing you the process; a little quirky, but it hits a bunch.