Page 5 - Clive Head
P. 5

 For much of Head’s career he has made large paintings, with just the occasional small canvas. His current work reverses this through a series of 30” x 40” canvases, three of which are included in this exhibition. These dimensions are of particular importance to Head being the standard format on which he was encouraged to work as a student, and also one to which he has feared to return. Loading these new canvases with a painterly energy, complex rhythms and vivid colour, The Protean Mistress, Faulkner’s Medicament (cover image) and Shepherd’s Watch, elaborate the themes of The Indian Summer Series on a condensed scale.
In comparing painting to photography, Head is quick to point out that, whereas a photographic image is made up of coloured dots which are all the same size, a painting creates an image through coloured marks, everyone being different and invented by the artist. This extraordinarily complex, human and unique means of structuring space and form can lead to multiple and simultaneous images. Though often unseen, it has been a feature of painting’s long history and not just the more obvious layering that stems from Cubism. Complementary to this is the flux between images, the shifting of one motif into another. In Head’s exploration of this transitional state he invariably refers to the metamorphosis of the ancient classics.
Mail Train for Jasper
acrylic on paper
271/2” x 221/2”
The Greek sea god Proteus had the ability to change shape and form. The Protean Mistress may allude to the fables of this mutable god, or, perhaps the title refers to painting herself.
 Shepherd’s Watch
oil on canvas
40” x 30”
The Protean Mistress oil on canvas 30” x 40”
The metamorphosis in Head’s painting can only really be seen by those willing to live with his works. They burn extremely slowly. They also require an initial act of faith. What may, at first, appear as an abstract configuration is rooted in human experience and will reveal its figurative qualities if sought.
Painting with acrylic on paper, Head makes both tonal studies and more colourful works. Mail Train for Jasper began with memories of a train journey home from the Netherlands. The title refers to the painter Jasper Johns. Head pays tribute to Johns’ penchant for grey in this near monochromatic work. Closer inspection reveals a morphic transition of life in the railway carriage into an image of an English postal stamp with the Queen’s profile, a wry nod perhaps to Johns’ buried images of the American flag. On this occasion, Head is happy to point out the double image, though he regards a painting’s morphing layers not as a visual game to entertain the viewer but as fundamental to its material humanity.
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