Sonia

ART REVIEW July/August 1996

LAWSON

An artist’s diary

On the eve of an important retrospective, Sonia Lawson RA  reflects on the changes that have taken place in her work during the last three decades and explains how she arrived at her present way of working.

Having had my recent time filled with preparations for a retrospective exhibition covering 30 years’ work since 1966, I am now keen to get back to current paintings. But things have to be categorised to some extent at least, though not so much as to negate my broad intentions. From the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s I felt myself to be an artist of conscience and accountability; a witness. Paintings with such titles as Figure at Dawn (Prisoner awaiting execution) ,Daybreak (execution), Bound Figure, No Hiding Place and Frail Peace, support this. Works of that period are from a limited palette, concentrating on the gravity of the subject matter, eschewing beguiling colour as inappropriate to the case.

No Hiding Place (1974) oil on canvas 153cm x 122cm

I always looked upon Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal (1957), shot in black and white, as holding all the weight of passionate colour. I now see Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Killing (1987), shot in colour, as holding all the strength and intensity of black and white. Both directors succeed in engaging us so thoroughly by their characteristic minimalism. Their vision is what counts and I’ve learned that colour can be used, not just for its own sake, which isn’t enough, but as a potent integral aside.

Currently I want the paint to have its own indulgence; oil, pigments, colour, honed and wrought- not just gestural notations, but something made and ‘built’: growing and filling out like a fed thing.

My interest is to solve the difficulty of using recognisable imagery, yet having the freedom of abstraction, evading the strictures of narrative, yet still using, say, a boat, a tree, a figure if I want to, and if I use them it is important to simultaneously try and break the bounds of familiarity. It makes credible why German painter Georg Baselitz turns his paintings upside down. Surely it is in order to escape the demand for an explanation to what is, after all, an image of a person set down upon a canvas. Baselitz can now present his work as something freed from narrative, yet the figurative elements remain very visible.

The First of England (1993-94) oil on canvas. 35.5cm x  36.5cm

If I’m concerned with the materials themselves and the application process, whilst at the same time dealing with expression and emotion (but free from unnecessary embellishment), then a plump, vigorous minimalism is needed.

My recent scoring of the surface, making runes with the brush handle in the paint and cutting into the thick layers with a blade are beginning to take on a primitive, basic clarity, while the paint is a sophisticated, crafted surface worked on over a long time. The combination is a positive piece of building. Now all subject matter can hold its own subjective reality and I am currently working within the broad scope which this allows.

Rune Rock (1996) oil on canvas. 38cm x  37cm

WORKINGS

I think of my ‘workings’ in terms of something quarried and hewn, honed down, built up, not ‘painted’, although using paint as I see it remains a worthwhile activity in the face of so much conceptual videosim.

My workings are collectively a presentation, not a representation.

The regular grid geometry of Pompeii, combined with its many pictorial statements of earthy love, portrayed as they are with such instinctive insouciance inside its houses, have had some impact in my workings. This refresher from so far back (2000 years) made me reinstate the nude figure. I like that nakedness never abides by fashion’s authority and it remains timeless. Animals and birds are likewise dateless, though furred or feathered they wear no time-trap raiment.

If I use the unclothed figure a lot, I am not doing something for ‘Naturism’ nor for nature itself, but seeking independence from taste and vogue. My interest lies with the positive, unidentified, warm and vulnerable tribe of homo sapiens, as well as with the untrammelled abstract principles that exist with or without us or our chosen subject matter.

Sonia Lawson. November 1999