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Nearing
Oil on board
71.50cm x 82.00cm
1963
I made this painting extra curricular, over sixty one years ago, when I was eighteen years of age, in an art school atmosphere that was definitely not conducive to such things, and sometimes was actively hostile, but mostly just indifferent. The primary objective being, at that time, to train students for formal examinations in another tradition with different values. I had made a number of non-figurative paintings by this time, and these early works were the precursors to many more in an abstract genre I have made subsequently, over a period in excess of sixty years. Originally the painting was titled Grey Composition 1, but I grew tired of titling my paintings solely by reference to the dominant colours and Nearing seemed compositionally more apposite.
It is not a self consciously minimalistic piece, but essentially is an exercise in including only what is necessary and thus, of excluding the extraneous, this approach applied to the deliberately restrained colour range used in the painting, as well as to the forms.
At that time, together with a passionate interest in the work of a number of other, then living painters, I was especially interested in the work of the late William Scott, and to those who know this artist’s work, his influence may be vaguely discernible, especially in the suspended box shape to the left with the circular form to the top, although this is more abstracted than Scott’s forms which were sometimes directly derived from household objects.
I was particularly interested in the sense of ‘balanced tension’ created by the circular form suspended within the square form at the top left, which itself ‘hangs’ from the top of the painting, and the red coloured quarter arc shape which intrudes from the right.
In 1964 I was able to afford the first monograph on Scott by Alan Bowness, I was fascinated to discover that Scott had quoted a passage by Michael Rothenstein from: Looking at Pictures, which has subsequently lodged firmly in my consciousness:
‘I find beauty in plainness, in a conception which is precise... A simple idea which to the observer in its intensity must inevitably shock and leave a concrete image in the mind.’
This tenet has endured, and has influenced much of my work since, but unfortunately, time and regular ongoing reference, has left my Scott monograph very much the worse for wear – I would not want to be without it though, even given its dilapidated state.
George Taylor
December 2024
