about

critical acclaim

This article was translated from the Japanese and has not been edited.

From the Sinbijutsu Shimbun (The New Art Journal), 11th November 1989

New Trends in British Art

Simon Blackwood

A much-awaited “figure of consequence”.
By Susumu Takiguchi

Blackwood’s paintings conjure up images of paradise. He is not what one would call a whole-hearted optimist but he does believe that there is intrinsic good in both nature and man. He allows himself to be guided by the cosmos and is sympathetic to beauty rather than the spirit of man. This then, is an artist who aspires after ‘truth’ and ‘good’ although it is the untiring pursuit of ‘beauty’ that dominates his paintings.

Blackwood’s pictures are, more than anything else, exquisitely beautiful. A dazzling array of pure colours leap and dance about on the canvas like a symphony by Mozart transformed into a painting. And the colours are interwoven with flashes of light. His paintings are known as ‘romantic-luminist’ because their effect is much like that of a luminary.

The paintings are predominantly of landscapes but he also deals with subjects such as some aspect of everyday life or a corner of a garden with an intimate bit of human interest in it. Some of his favourite themes are the gardens or woods around his home or the Bosphorus in Turkey where he has a studio. A special feature of the first type is that, even in Scotland, one only has to look close enough to see that Nature is made up of a rich variety of colours. The thousands of rhodedendrons which grow in the vast gardens near his house are particularly important to him and this seems to have formed the basis of his palette. He has produced innumerable works like ‘Secret Garden’ whose representational style is replaced in his mind’s eye by a symphony and then transformed into an ‘abstract of beauty’ like ‘diptych’. This is when Blackwood’s brush becomes like the baton of the conductor at a concert.

Turning to his other world – Turkey, first of all there is one picture which may one day become his ‘trademark’. That painting is ‘the blue boat’ which could only be produced by an artist who has watched the way the water moves and the passage of boats on the Bosphorus morning. Noon and night through all the seasons. Many artists have painted water but this picture has the style, atmosphere and inspiration of such geniuses as Courbet, Monet and Hokusai. In reducing the image to this simplest of statements not only is no detail lost but the whole resonates through its composition.

Such outstanding features are only possible thanks to Blackwood’s skill in drawing which in turn owes much to his highly-tuned sensitivity. He sketches in colour using pastels to capture the outline, quality, depth and very essence of a scene and the resulting finished oil painting evolves directly from these. There is the immediacy!

Blackwood has attracted attention at his recent one-man exhibition in London but what is more important is that this artist is earning a high reputation among connoisseur collectors from all over the world who are constantly on the look out for originality and quality. Blackwood’s world of beauty goes deep but it is not so much this as his enormous potential that makes one say that he is ’an artist in the making”.

Since I first came across the artist , his paintings have developed at an astounding rate and there is no knowing what heights he will scale as an artist if he continues in the same way. He has been compared to Bonnard, Monet, Villard and Pissarro but this does not mean anything. What is important is how, on the surface, his style seen as impressionist, consists of a wild array of colours and a completely haphazard outline, yet has such depth and solid composition, culminating in such exquisite beauty.

The Japanese will certainly take to Blackwood. It is inevitable that , before too long, Japanese collectors will be hearing about his paintings from their international ‘connoisseurs of art’ and be on the look out for them and he will be given due homage as a ;figure of consequence’ there too.