|
CATALOGUE e-catalogue works on desktop only |
Download or click through the e-catalogue for
9-14th July 2018 exhibition - ROA Gallery. Email alicehallartist@gmail.com for your own copy. |
| alice_hall_catalogue_download.pdf |
Forewords by Rachel Campbell Johnston Art Critic, The Times
Alice Hall has been travelling. Flip through this catalogue and you will find pictures of snowy Swiss mountains and sweltering Indian markets; of wind-blown Cornish cliff-tops and serene Italian lakes. But stand in front of the paintings and you can almost feel as if you, too, have taken a journey. Hall paints with a panache that puts you right at the spot: perched on that balcony above Florentine roofscapes; balanced on a harbour wall watching fishing boats bob; hauled up a ski-slope to contemplate vertiginous perspectives; reclined on a riverbank to gaze upon Mughal palaces.
This sense of immediacy comes from her commitment to plein air painting, a practice which, though it dates back many centuries, was turned into a modern art form by the French Impressionists. In the 19th century, with the invention of easily portable equipment – above all the new pigments that came packaged in tubes – artists made the most of expanding rail networks and, pitching their easels outdoors, set about painting landscapes with a revelatory new freshness, capturing the effects of weather and light.
Hall follows in this tradition. Not for her the photograph. She sits at the heart of the scenes that she paints. Each canvas is completed more or less in one sitting. That low evening light which slicks the wet beach, drawing a purple shadow from beneath every pebble, is fleeting. That sun which flares over the face of an Udaipur fort will soon fall. Those ripples which rock leafy reflections last only a moment. Hall has to work fast to conjure these ephemeral dramas.
Compositions are quick and, it would seem, increasingly strong as she climbs to discover the veering perspectives of high views. Colours are bright and applied with a bold confidence whether evoking the red dust of an Indian street or the metallic lustre of New York's skyscrapers; the sparkle of sapphires that sprinkle the Mediterranean or that emerald glitter that lies strewn across Scottish grass.
Paint can be so thick that colour feels more a presence than a property. Texture is sensual. Viewers can all but feel the wind as it buffets through clouds or tumbles about in the branches of a tree. They can almost hear the snap of those flags or the slap of that water. But more frequently Hall conjures a mood of serenity. She speaks of that strange sense of calmness that settles over the world before it has quite woken or as the sun slowly dips towards purpled horizons. Pigments are softly smeared and delicately touched, capturing the opalescence that shimmers across water or the buttery slick across a Venetian lagoon.
Hall sets out to distil that moment when even the mundane can be magical. As you look at her paintings, you can travel to another land too.
Rachel Campbell Johnston
Art Critic, The Times
Alice Hall has been travelling. Flip through this catalogue and you will find pictures of snowy Swiss mountains and sweltering Indian markets; of wind-blown Cornish cliff-tops and serene Italian lakes. But stand in front of the paintings and you can almost feel as if you, too, have taken a journey. Hall paints with a panache that puts you right at the spot: perched on that balcony above Florentine roofscapes; balanced on a harbour wall watching fishing boats bob; hauled up a ski-slope to contemplate vertiginous perspectives; reclined on a riverbank to gaze upon Mughal palaces.
This sense of immediacy comes from her commitment to plein air painting, a practice which, though it dates back many centuries, was turned into a modern art form by the French Impressionists. In the 19th century, with the invention of easily portable equipment – above all the new pigments that came packaged in tubes – artists made the most of expanding rail networks and, pitching their easels outdoors, set about painting landscapes with a revelatory new freshness, capturing the effects of weather and light.
Hall follows in this tradition. Not for her the photograph. She sits at the heart of the scenes that she paints. Each canvas is completed more or less in one sitting. That low evening light which slicks the wet beach, drawing a purple shadow from beneath every pebble, is fleeting. That sun which flares over the face of an Udaipur fort will soon fall. Those ripples which rock leafy reflections last only a moment. Hall has to work fast to conjure these ephemeral dramas.
Compositions are quick and, it would seem, increasingly strong as she climbs to discover the veering perspectives of high views. Colours are bright and applied with a bold confidence whether evoking the red dust of an Indian street or the metallic lustre of New York's skyscrapers; the sparkle of sapphires that sprinkle the Mediterranean or that emerald glitter that lies strewn across Scottish grass.
Paint can be so thick that colour feels more a presence than a property. Texture is sensual. Viewers can all but feel the wind as it buffets through clouds or tumbles about in the branches of a tree. They can almost hear the snap of those flags or the slap of that water. But more frequently Hall conjures a mood of serenity. She speaks of that strange sense of calmness that settles over the world before it has quite woken or as the sun slowly dips towards purpled horizons. Pigments are softly smeared and delicately touched, capturing the opalescence that shimmers across water or the buttery slick across a Venetian lagoon.
Hall sets out to distil that moment when even the mundane can be magical. As you look at her paintings, you can travel to another land too.
Rachel Campbell Johnston
Art Critic, The Times