|
News Update
15th January 2010
I have made minor alterations and additions to a few pages. The
present day Random Acts of Kindness initiatives (2010) have been moved
to a new page here.
A Looking experiment has been created, requesting your your
feedback, click
here. This is a positive private research experiment
without any connections to third parties; no personal contact details
are required, and replies can be sent in anonymously. When sufficient
feedback comes in it will be posted on this website under News
Update on this page.
Thank you!
Philip Dawes
Click here to
go directly to the Painting's Navigation page.
• • • • • • •
11th January
2010
The Philip Dawes Fine
Art gallery has now mostly been updated, although there is still a
great deal of fine-tuning to do. Mostly all of the original colour film
negatives and positives of the paintings have been digitally rescanned
to produce clearer and more accurate colour renditions of the original
paintings. Although there are still some of the smaller watercolours
and drawings that need to be re-shot. However, many of the colour negatives were of such poor
quality and thin in density, created by the only colour film
processing laboratory in Ischia in 1979, which seemed to have used
antique chemicals with very little developing life left in them, like a
50-mile marathon runner coming to their last 20 yards of the finishing
line, having used up 99.99 percent of their energy reserves, collapses
and then by an act of sheer willpower, painfully crawls to the
finishing line to collapse again from total and utter exhaustion, but
knowing that he had completed his objective, be it with the barest of
energies at all odds. And so the laboratory's chemicals were not just
half dead, they had largely given up; all that remained was a glimpse
of their vague spirit, be it on another dimension. In many such cases
the digital images had to have a great deal of retouching care, (my
old advertising profession, but on photos), in an endeavour to pull
the images back as close to their originals as remembrance permitted,
although accuracy is not always absolute.
The gallery has been
completely redesigned and repaginated, and new pages created; some of the older pages
may not function any more. I have also added a new gallery section, the
Angel Slogan,
which relates to the phrase
Practise Random Kindness & Senseless Acts of
Beauty, a product range I produced with the slogan
printed on in the 1990's, as an inspirational idea to stimulate others
to perform acts of kindness, without the expectation of any personal
returns. The slogan originated in San Francisco, U.S.A. in the early
1980's. A phrase I love that was in the original text received back in
the early 1990's was gorilla goodness! It conjures up a great
image.
A renewal of the kindness
theme has been given a resurgence in recent times, perhaps as a
consequence of the societal problems created by our corrupt
governments. The recent kindness initiatives were started
spontaneously by various people in different parts of the world,
including India and China, as well as in the U.S. and Europe and
others in England, including a trio in this country who performed what
is probably the world biggest ever Kindness give-away in 2008,
supported by Boris-boy, Mayor of London,
see here.
More on the Angel Slogan subject can be found under those pages.
In December 2009 I discovered
that a number of my paintings were being sold at public auctions in
England. For this reason
I have added a new section to each of the paintings that have been
sold on, showing sales history with dates of the auctions, etc. This
new development will involve periodically updating those sales
histories, thereby keeping a running record.
My life drawings, which are
currently represented by only eight drawings under that section, will
take quite some time to photograph, as there are several hundred of
them. This
is therefore a long on-going project.
The galleries contain more
autobiographic material than heretofore, which again, will be expanded
over time. For this reason I feel it is important to bring your
attention to my copyright notice below:
Copyright
All rights reserved. Philip Dawes© 2010:
www.dawesfineart.com
.
Private Use: Copying of images on this website is permitted
only for personal private use, with the exception of
autobiographical information, which may not be copied in any form.
Commercial Use:
Copying of any material for commercial purposes of any kind in any
form without written authorisation from the copyright holder is
prohibited. Requests for commercial use should contact the webmaster.
Thank you for your time,
please enjoy your
journey through the galleries. The best way to start is to go to the
navigation page here:
Click here for the paintings.
Thank you!
Philip Dawes
Introduction
Welcome!
This is an updated version of the original introduction prior to 2010.
The Philip Dawes Fine Art Gallery is divided into
fourteen sub-galleries of different heading types found
here. The basic style is
naturalistic with occasional supra-real overtones. Paintings
are in oil on canvas,
watercolour, ink and wash and drawings in pencil, and there are also my
other skills and activities under other gallery headings.
I have exhibited at galleries in Britain, Germany and Italy; London galleries include:
The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Piccadilly; Piccadilly Gallery;
Mermaid Theatre Gallery, City of London;
Gallery 45, Hampstead; Kingsgate
Workshops Gallery, West Hampstead; Hesketh Hubbard Art Society, et al.
And when in Ischia in 1979, I received
1st prize in an open painters'
competition. The details of an exhibition at a minor gallery in
Köln, Germany have been lost.
Ischia period
Between
April 1979 to March 1980 I
lived and painted on the island of Ischia, Italy. For most of that time, until early November
1979, my car was my home and I drove the car every night to near the top of Mount Epomeo,
my sleeping area, see photo right; the red arrow marks the spot.
There were no houses at this level on the mountain, and cooking the evening
meal and breakfast in the middle of nature was sheer bliss. The car, a
German Ford Tournier estate, was like the English Granada but better,
it effectively became a camper van. For the purpose I built a stainless
steel box lined with 1/2 inch (12mm) plywood, 78-3/4 inches (2 metres)
long, by 39-3/8 inches (1 metre) wide by 19-11/16 inches (50cm) deep,
divided into four sections with lockable doors, for painting gear, food and
cooking utensils, clothing and personal effects, and finally one for tools. The box
was completely weather proof, even from the most torrential rains, and
the stainless steel reflected much of the heat of the Italian summer.
The box was anchored to the top of the car by four brackets each side.
I also had special reinforced rear springs fitted to the car to
compensate for the weight of the heavy box and its contents.
The Ischia period was my most
prolific painting period, where I met many people and made friends with,
one of whom was the artist Bolivar, an Ischian by birth and quite
well know in the Italian art world, who introduced me to Sir
William and Lady Walton. I recall at the time when we entered the
Walton residence via the massive solid steel entrance doors to the
villa's grounds and meeting the Walton's, Lady Walton remarked to
Bolivar that they last met ten years previously, and they seemed to be
old friends. Over eighteen months later after my return to England, I
received a letter from Lady Walton informing me that Bolivar had died
and the whole island turned out to his funeral; she was indeed
distressed at his passing.
Although I went to Ischia to
paint sales of my work were few, and I had to haggle with the main
person interested in my work, a dentist by the name of Massimo Ielasi,
who introduced me to Bolivar and many other friends of his. Massimo's
English was exceptionally good, which aided out communication. And
inevitably my money was being used up without replenishment; there was
no bottomless pit from which money oozed from the ground, and so my
stay was therefore somewhat limited; I knew this from the moment I
stepped foot on that little paradise. I returned to England in March
1980.
The quality of the photographs of
many of the paintings leaves much to be desired. This was partly due to two
factors:
1. My own lack of care in photographing the works. This is shown with one particular landscape painting where
strong shadows are
cast on the canvas by the branches of a tree from behind.
2. The films of
the paintings photographed during my Ischian period were processed by a local photographic laboratory;
information about this is given above in the news update above. It is
not possible to rectify film negatives that have been largely
destroyed by worn out, used-up chemicals. Nevertheless, you the viewer may have an appreciation of the type
of style, technique, etc. of the paintings
Copyright: Please refer to the copyright notice above, under the news
update section.
If you wish to commission a portrait or other work, please
contact me at:
dawes777 at gmail dot com.
Please
replace the 'at' with @ and the 'dot' in the conventional way.
If you wish to
purchase a painting please email me giving
the full page URL and title of work.
Click here for the paintings.
ENJOY! |
