MIKE HOLCROFT
‘THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS AND OTHER STORIES’;
May 31ST to June 29th, 2008 > Paintings and Drawings
A dramatic shift of consciousness, a bunch of ransom garlic, and an artistic challenge from a 9 year old girl - for Pembrokeshire artist Mike Holcroft. Currently showing at Nant y Coy Arts, his exhibition of paintings and drawings ‘The Secret Life of Plants and Other Stories’ is the culmination of two years re-establishing, indeed re-inventing, his natural artistic abilities.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, where he was inextricably linked with the tail end of pop art and abstract expressionism, there has been a continuing enrichment process and shows in London, New York and Spain. Although he has in no way abandoned his interest in, and use of abstraction, even though it is 30 years on, it is now refreshing to see him return to the core of advice offered by tutors Peter Blake, Fred Cumming, Jack Smith and David Tindle who held similar views: never let go of your natural ability to describe the observed world. He has reinvented himself in the genre of observed truth.
The suspension of the central image in his oil paintings emphasises the object, rather than the subject, of flowers and plants. Most definitely they are not botanical illustrations, though they are, of course, observational. The containment and dynamic placement of the plant within marginal buffer zones, frequently bisected with horizontal lines, creates a frame within a frame, a mesmerising illusionist space and colour fields, almost turning the painting inside out.
Scale is life size or slightly bigger, which conforms to psychological space rather than optical perspective, a view he shares with David Hockney. He is acutely aware that all truth is a lie, artistically speaking, there being a built in deception in painting, the success of which depends on how good you are at lying. MH tells some remarkably good lies.
Mike has certainly been challenged to transform what could be regarded as a corny subject in modernist terms, into true works of art. He has an unashamedly contemplative regard and love of the plants and flowers he observes. Ironically he finds the more loaded the subject the better. Flowers and plants are usually presents and celebrations. “There is always a hook, some emotive entanglement underlining each one of these subjects.” ‘Birthday Daffs’ developed into a symbolic struggle of dark and light, daffs and coal dust. Or ‘Tulips’ ‘….these are past their sell by date, you won’t be able to work with these’. Cut flowers, suspension, opening of container, transparency or density of container – all have metaphoric connotations.
The skin of the paintings is always highly charged; at once as tight as a drum and softened with looser mark making. Surface luminosity and colour combinations are achieved through subtle glazing techniques. In all his work he pays careful attention to highest quality materials and conservation. “Brain surgery” is how MH describes the juggling act of these creative processes which makes the still, meditative calm of finished work all the more remarkable.
Works on paper in charcoal/pencil/conte show him to be a consummate draftsman. His two ‘Ransom Drawings’ are in fact the seed of this whole new body of work and a sea change in his artistic language - thanks to 9 year old Jara, who was visiting him with parents 2 years ago on his smallholding in the Preseli hills. Out of the blue she held out a bunch of wild garlic, challenging ‘My Dad says you’re and artist…..would you draw these for me?’ It proved to be a titanic struggle of 2 days pacing the studio floor before overcoming his self imposed denial of his true voice, hemmed in as he was by the supremacy of abstract expressionism. With the success of his first observational drawing for many years came a realisation that he had closed off not only from his own early natural talent, but closed off from the nurturing powers of nature and the healing secret life of plants. The last drawing in this series “King Ransom” is confident and strident with smouldering blacks, emphasising the spiritual light emanating from the opening buds.
Numerous drawings and paintings followed, resulting in this remarkable exhibition, which is Part 1. Part 2 follows in May 2009.
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Still Life with Cow Skull
Crazy Tulips 