Sarah Dwyer @ Josh Lilley
I’m not getting paid to cover Josh Lilley Exhibitions, it’s just that the gallery is in Fitzrovia and i love walking the back streets north of Tottenham Court road. I often imagine myself in the post war years, wandering into a pub to find Francis Bacon and Quentin crisp discussing the merits of the british political system over a sherry.
Moving swiftly on.
Sarah Dwyers paintings are dynamic and spontaneous. You do get a sense that she’s lets it all out on the canvas, but not in a violent grand action, more like gracefully poetic meandering way. Perhaps even with her eyes closed.
I especially like the textural intimacy. Different materials cohabiting harmoniously, in a ramshackle manner, within the confines of a canvas. The only straight lines are the frame edges.
I do have some reservations. There is little immediate impact or dynamism within the canvases. With a short attention span i find myself walking away quickly from each one. They are the sort of paintings you need to spend time with, or even live with. If you did i’m sure it would slowly draw you in and envelop you into it’s cosy world of ethereal abstraction.
Now, I certainly want to go and see these! Not sure if it is a cosy world, though it can be a bit like a retreat from the “real” world (by which I probably mean the virtual world) of speed and instant everything. Abstract paintings like these do seem to have a slowing down effect on the viewer, and that could be cosy, like Matisse’s “comfortable armchair” yet, for me, as I reflect, it is usually mortality that I end up contemplating (just me, no doubt) but that’s never cosy.
Oh dear i hope you don’t think about death every time you see an abstract painting, especially as you are an abstract artist no?
Perhaps not every time (I am reminding myself of this Woody Allen clip that I like a lot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ed26Jly39U).