Contrary to first impressions, there is common ground in the work of Stewart Bremner and Kevin Low, who appear to make unlikely fellow exhibitors in 'Worlds Apart' at the Union Gallery this month.
Both start with a human mind observed. Bremner fixes first on himself, at a current or remembered point in time and space, examines that self in abstraction, and then plays with it through the seductively distorting medium of paint.
Low fixes first on an imagined other, an extension of himself and his imagination, whom he encourages to develop through portraiture into some fully rounded or half-glimpsed individual in a broader, almost recognisable historical context.
Both start from a moment of self-recognition, and a subsequent willingness to let go.
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[img_assist|nid=2879|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=200]Stewart Bremner is an old friend of and exhibitor at the Union Gallery. A locally based professional artist for the last 10 years, this current collection was begun only 4 months ago, at a time when – he candidly offers – a problematically long-distance, trans-Atlantic relationship was uppermost in his mind.
The consequent paintings – unified by a limited range of colour and tone, disciplined in most cases by their modest size and square framing – reflect a mixture of conflicting emotions: attraction and separation, desire and hesitation, romance and pain.
Bremner doesn’t expect audiences to decipher these works in any literal sense. By the time a work is finished and on view, he is no longer its sole subject; indeed, looking at the paintings now, Bremner himself sometimes struggles to recall their precise motivation. Rather, they are intended as potent, visual cues: invitations to participate in the strange, cosmic choreography of the heart.
Bremner’s forms spin round each other, separating (Breaking with the Past, top-right), rejoining, reforming, renegotiating their interactions (Pulled in its Wake, above-right). The viewer could be watching galaxies or microscopic processes in motion, and by entering this ambiguously scaled universe, by submitting personal feelings and memories to its laws of physics, embarks on a strangely vertiginous journey of his or her own.
Where each work may take the viewer, and its consequent attractiveness, will vary from person to person but one of my favourites (below) was Longing in the Lines.
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‘[img_assist|nid=2880|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=480|height=640]I make pictures of people,’ writes Kevin Low in his notes to this exhibition. ‘I know many of my “subjects” very well … but I can never know everything.’ He thinks of his pictures as ‘catalysts for your own flights of fancy’.
Inspired by the theatrical English demi-mondes of the 18th and 19th centuries, Low delights in realising human oddities of the stage and provincial travelling show.
He depicts performers posed in costume and in role, flamboyant actresses, con-artists posing with the instruments of their calling, all suggesting the confidence of performance, the authoritative voice of promoters and huxters: The Patriotic Wife, The Dancer Grace Han All Done Up as 'Spring’ (below-right), The Hippodrome 'Savage' Samuel.
And in many instances (The Incendiary Miss Siddons, above-right, excepted), these contrived exteriors are portrayed in the act of dissolution. The face betrays pain, self-doubt, deception; the costume’s surface glamour has begun to fade.
[img_assist|nid=2882|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=165|height=200]Nearly always, Low has elaborated back-stories to flesh out these lives, details weaving in and out of the true biographies of real people. The 'Precious' Twins: Agnes and Jack (below), for example, he imagines as (fake) stage psychics. She sings questions to the dead to the rattle of a tambourine, he sings back their answers to the lilt of his guitar. Their voices then unite in strange, unsettling harmony. The file at the very foot of this page includes, with the artist’s permission, further biographical snippets with thumbnails of the paintings to which they refer.
There are delicious paradoxes also in the media with which Low works. His – apparently traditional – portraits are created using a state-of-the-art digital ‘tablet’ and ‘pen’, but are then printed in very limited editions using ‘archival papers and inks’. He eschews the pinpoint clarity such technology offers, preferring a gauzy softness of line, as if his characters were viewed through bottle glass.
The results are without fail intriguing, witty, charming, and mordant: a provocative combination I find irresistible. AM
['Worlds Apart' will continue at the Union Gallery (45 Union Street) until 30 April.]
------------------UPDATE--------------------
Artists Stewart Bremner and Kevin Low will be at the Union Gallery from 3.00-5.00pm on Saturday 14 April to talk about their techniques and motivations, and to answer any questions you may have, write Union's Alison Auldjo and Rob Dawkins. Low will return to the gallery on Saturday 21 April – noon–5.00pm – to demonstrate his technique in person, and we would encourage you to come and see this fascinating process in action. Both events are free.
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