Gareth Colliton

Ha! I was just about to write to you to let you know I’d made a start, but nothing escapes your attention, Mr Bowe. And I do like that quote. In context of your own work, I’m intrigued by the obstructed portraits, and the disfigured nudes. Unfortunately, I can’t use naked subjects for my thesis, but I’d love to . Faceless nudes are particularly interesting, because there’s very little of the subject’s identity left for the viewer… where does that sit in the pigeon-hole system? Your paintings are definitely not sexualised bodies, and they sit somewhere in this new (?) field of Saville and Freud, this anonymous yet personal subject. There’s a book in that!

I’m attempting to write something….it’s getting long!

trying trying! I got sidetracked by Josh’s work and now I’m getting rid of words!!!!

oh dear…I’ve changed identity too ….

no…just confused…..

I think its all a load of paint really ;)

hhmmm….thought I was getting my ideas together on this but then I read your reply to Josh and looked through his stuff (fascinating work he has)
...I’ve just created something which must be a self portrait (I’m guessing), 3D….and faceless…...

and then I think I have to agree with Harley as well… but I like to think that in a portrait the painter is extracting something of the subject not usually seen and showing it to us via the paint.

I think pretty much anything goes regarding your list of questions at the end there but the aim would be for the artist to leave something of themself in the picture by having connected with whatever thing they end up showing.
Obviously your keepers are narrowing things down a bit if you aren’t allowed nudes (or gold leaf)...interesting and no doubt frustrating. Are they trying to take you out of some comfort zone to create what they consider to be a challenge for you? are they just being conservative?

I’ve always thought that artists make pictures of themselves (by default, when not portraying a well defined character). I didn’t see your portraits as pictures of you and it made me think about how you are, a peopley sort of person and that was part of what made you a painter of other people…your special ability being to find things in people and show them to us through paint.
However! I do think you have made pictures of yourself in some of your other work….I’m getting off the track…(elaboration upon request)

The difficulty with any debate about contemporary portraiture is how much broader the definition has become. What is understood today as Portraiture no longer confines itself to “likeness”, “representation” or even “imitation”. Saying that, Gareth’s post is clearly aimed at addressing issues surrounding contemporary figurative portraiture, and in particular portraiture’s value and significance in today’s society. Gareth asks, what purpose does the contemporary painted portrait serve? I believe that as far as commissioned portraits are concerned the intention must still be to flatter, convey social or professional standing and allude to the finer aspects of the subject’s personality. Scene-setting and props must play their part, as must technique, facture and scale – all of which may be dictated to a greater or lesser extent by the artist’s client. Exceptionally, some commissioned artists will have carte blanche in how they choose to approach and execute a portrait. In these rare cases, it’s the artist’s reputation that first and foremost attracts patrons. Lucien Freud is a good example in this instance. His art does not allow for any form of indulgence or flattery and yet would-be patrons are only too willing to expose themselves to his formidable scrutiny for the sake of personal kudos. For the majority of professional portraitists however, artistic compromise comes as part and parcel of commercial reality, and the very old, very established business of flattery, promotion and approbation must continue to be a function of this genre if portraitists are to make a living. This is not to say, however, that great art cannot succeed under these constraints. Quite the contrary. You only have to look at the Old Masters to discover how an intelligent artist can subtly thwart the intentions of his patrons: Raphael’s portrait of Pope Leo X and cardinals, for instance, with its atmosphere of political and filial mistrust; Or Anthony Van Dyck’s highly complex group portrait of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, with his Family, which cunningly conveys from beneath the poise and riches, a fragile and unhappy dynasty facing an uncertain future.

Beginning with the impressionists in the 19th century, we witness a more personal, even confessional form of portraiture emerge, which was to revolutionise the genre in the 20th century and continues to influence our concepts of what portraiture should address in contemporary art practice. Artists began to explore with increasing audacity the very nature of appearance, personality, identity and being. They used friends and lovers, anonymous sitters, and even other figures in art and literature to explore what it is to be alive, corporeal and human, in possession of a complex psychology and fragmentary personality. Pablo Picasso perhaps more than most dissected his relationships through personal portraiture, and remains a key source of inspiration for artists practising portraiture today.

Gareth’s next point for discussion tackles head-on the thorny and complex issue of identity in contemporary portraiture. He asks, do we learn anything about the identity of the person represented in a modern portrait? What’s in it for them? And the artist? Because of the sheer diversity now in artists’ approaches to portraiture this will surely prove a rich and complex topic for debate, and one I suspect must elude a final answer. Saying that, there is already a great deal written on this subject by artists, art critics and historians. I’d like to return to Lucien Freud at this point as it’s my opinion that this (somewhat evasive) utterance by the artist nevertheless sheds light on his intentions, and the significance of identity in his portraiture: “I’m only interested in my sitters as animals. I want to use, record and observe particular things about a specific person. I would wish my portraits to be of people, not like them. Not having the look of the sitter, being them. As far as I am concerned, the paint is the person.”

This statement alone is worthy of another blog discussion, but by my reading of it, Freud is challenging the status of personality/identity in contemporary portraiture by asserting the pre-eminence of physicality, flesh and paint in his oeuvre. Freud’s erstwhile contemporary, Francis Bacon, took a less forensic and (for me) more compelling stance on the intentions of portraiture. I’ve selected this quote particularly because it stands in stark contrast to Freud’s assertion: I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail leaving its trail of the human presence… as a snail leaves its slime.” For Bacon, then, capturing or inducing the human presence is portraiture’s principal purpose…but is the human presence the same thing as human identity? My feeling is that identity is certainly part of that that human presence, and is what aids the viewer to engage initially with the work. But ultimately, it must be this human presence, this living, fugitive essence that breathes life into a portrait and makes it successful as a work of art.

As for what’s in it for the subject of a portrait and the artist…this can only be down to the individuals to determine, and what the portrait’s perceived purpose was. But I do believe that portraiture is in the end a profoundly human endeavour, and regardless of motivation or intention it is ultimately a way for us to come closer to understanding ourselves and others. After all, a portrait is not a mirror, nor is it a final document of who or what a person is…it is, and must be, something more. I’m not in a position, however, to attempt to define what that “more” may be. I’ll leave that better heads than mine. Instead, I’d like to end my reply to Gareth’s post with another quote, this time from the Irish painter, Louis LeBrocquy, who I respect and admire for his quiet intellect, art and humanity: “…I realised that a portrait can no longer be the stable, pillared entity of Renaissance vision – that the portrait in our time can have no visual finality. Replacing the single definitive image by a series of inconclusive images has, therefore, perhaps something to do with contemporary vision, perceiving the image as a variable conception rather than a definitive manifestation in the Renaissance sense.”

Yes I am just a little bugger, personally I like what Jacques Lacan said
we can never mean what we say, and never say what we mean…
so we paint(maybe(possibly(well that’s the rough idea(isn’t it(?))))

I do like Harley’s short answers. Words are pretty useless (Maybe you should have asked for painted responses to this journal).
that said, Nicholas has used his words very well.
I agree that some photographers are able to extract “something more” from their portrait subjects but I guess, photography having become what it is, these days we see many, many more photographic “portraits” which don’t extract a lot.
Surely the brush strokes and hairs could just be described as the painter’s style – they could be there without the work being a portrait.
This idea of painters making portraits look like themselves….I really think I have seen less of this in works I would consider “highly successful” or “very good” (personal opinion of course) portraits (nothing against the Mona Lisa mind you….there is a Mona Lisa series over here) ...this fascinates me because, believing as I do that artists create images of themselves, I find it even more interesting when they can then get away from that and just portray the subject in a complex way.
I have a bit more to say, but not now …
and the elaboration might not go here.

Gareth, I would like to respond in an interlectual way but I am not really an interlectual artist…not all artists need to be…That does not mean I paint without thinking….my thinking is of the instinctive type. My painting of Andrew was more about feeling light,feeling a look,feeling an emotion from sitter and myself. I don’t care about the rest of the world at that particular moment of painting. It is human nature to create, that is how we evolve. I will think some more

Sorry Gareth, I can’t even spell Intellectual, does that mean i should be finger painting…LOL

haha yes maybe he couldnt say what he meant because it was he who said he cant say what he means or means what he says, when what he says is not what he means, but when he went to say what he meant he couldn’t say what he means…

And yes I do believe for some strange reason that you (Garth Coldtwon you know who you are) do put elements of yourself in the portraits you paint, whether or not it is just your style or your physical appearance, but i cant mean what i say or say what i mean…

I very much like your ideas. I’ve often asked myself “why am I so fascinated by the human figure?”

In the same way Micheal Angelo and Leonardo Di Vinci painted about religious figures to influence social change and celebrate value systems of their time, I feel like I am doing something very similar. Not on such a magnificent scale, however I am mirroring my environment’s value systems. I use pretty skinny, girls religiously in my work. I put primitive icons such as animal skulls and symbols which are used as their accessories. I display them as animals with no clothes and put them against a juxtaposition of bird feathers to suggest a primitive courtship of gender roles and subconscious drives, These are drives which exist primarily for the survival of the individual and the species, and the lack of care of the survival of other species. I talk about human’s contemporary self removal from the natural world and our own biosphere, our ancestors and the world as we know it.

It’s lots of fun and I hope I do inspire someone, somewhere along the way to question their environments and what they’re really doing.

Very very apt. Infact, you explain my work better than how I explain my work :P I’m glad you understand what I’m aiming for.

Keep up the awesome work.