Post by pigeonpie on Oct 27, 2009 16:31:19 GMT
Kenneth Draper’s work on display at Art London show
Stand 63. Over 20 of Kenneth Draper’s works were on display at the London fair
Kenneth Draper RA, distinguished artist, Royal Academician and resident of Es Castell, had a very successful Solo show at the prestigious “Art London” fair early this October. This liveliest of all London art fairs brought historically significant work by key Modern British and Twentieth Century Artists into juxtaposition with work by leading artists from China, India, Australia, and Japan.
It is an annual event and attracts visitors and galleries from all over the world. This year there were over sixty galleries participating showing a wide selection of figurative and abstract works. Ken exhibited with Lisa Sharpe Contemporary Art and hers was one of only six galleries dedicated to a single artist. Lisa Sharpe is an artists agent who works with a number of Royal Academicians and also sources 20th Century Modern masters such as Picasso, Miro, Mattise, Warhol and Zadkine.
The Gala Opening on 7th October was attended by hundreds of art lovers who braved a cold wet evening to make their way to Chelsea to be greeted by the sight of literally thousands of art works in the mediums of painting, sculpture and glass in a beautiful custom built spacious environment. It was an amazing event which continued until 12th October and was seen by thousands of collectors, dealers and an ever increasing interested public.
Ken’s exhibition on Stand 63, consisted of over twenty works including a large oil-pastel, inspired by the waterfalls of his native Yorkshire. The main body of the work however captured elements of the intense light, vivid colour and rugged beauty of the landscape of Menorca, which has been the main inspiration for his work for over twenty years. It certainly brought the warmth of the Mediterranean to a cold October London night.
Born to a mining family on the border between Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, northern England in 1944, Ken emerged as a talented youngster who was encouraged by his family to complete his schooling at Chesterfield College of Art and in 1962 moved to London to study painting at Kingston School of Art, followed by three years in the Sculpture department at the Royal College of Art, Kensington.
At the age of 20 his work attracted the interest of The Redfern Gallery in London who in 1924 had given debut exhibitions to Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Ken had his first group show with them in 1965 and his first Solo exhibition in 1969. Even at this early stage in his career he had started combining the illusions more associated with painting into three dimensional structures, which has been a continuing thread over forty years. The other important thread which has continually run through his work is a constant response to Landscape. He has exhibited in many major survey exhibitions of contemporary art both with painting and sculpture, such as the “British Sculptors of the 20th Century” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery London in 1985 and in 1992 “The poetic trace: Aspects of British Abstraction since 1945” held at the Adellson Galleries, New York, where he showed alongside only the most germane British painters who included Lanyon, Hodgkin, Hitchins, and Clough.
As writer Colin Roth has said “Kenneth Draper’s work hangs in some of the great art galleries of the world as well as in the best of homes, and has been exhibited in many countries including, besides Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Argentina, the United States of America and Japan. Everywhere it hangs, everywhere his art is seen, it is cherished for its humanity and its challenge, the gorgeousness of its surface and the profound depths which lurk beneath. Life is richer for its presence.”
In 1991 he received the great accolade of being elected to membership of the Royal Academy whose members are some of the greatest names in contemporary British art. There are only ever eighty Royal Academicians, each of them elected by their peers when an Academician dies, or is promoted to the status of “Senior Academician” on reaching the age of seventy-five.
Past Academicians include John Constable, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and J.M.W. Turner, while current RA’s include well-known figures such as David Hockney, Tracy Emin, John Hoyland and the sculptor Anthony Gormley (who was one of Ken’s former students when he was a tutor at Goldsmith’s College in the 1970’s).
It is no surprise that a coal miner’s son born near Sheffield should take every opportunity to travel in search of the landscape wonders of the world. Those travels have taken Ken to Egypt, East Africa, India and the canyons of the south western United States of America as well as across Europe. In 1985 he first visited Menorca with his wife, the photographer-artist Jean Macalpine, and the emotional connection and love of this unique island was virtually instantaneous. Returning again and again over the years. Ken often talks of its “spiritual energy”, its “piercing and constantly emerging beauty” which he refers to as “awesome and constantly surprising”.
It has often been noted that people looking at Ken’s work will be drawn in, sometimes to become lost as their eyes scan the myriad forms, textures, colours and nuances of light and tone – almost like those who have scaled a height to observe the land below from a vantage point can become momentarily transfixed by the spacious beauty of what they behold.
Some of the Menorcan references in the work seem clear – the gorgeous, swirling blues and deep, limpid stillness of a picture inspired by snorkeling the pristine waters which wash the island’s rocky coast. The almost delirious intensity as every close relative of the red end of the spectrum scorches the surface of a work created in the shimmering, rock-splitting heat of August, or the vast spaces conjured by the interplay of form, light and shadow – seeking to grasp the ephemeral play of dawn light in one of the island’s abandoned quarries…..
Other works contain references which are not so clear – especially the complexities of the “Constructions on Paper” which have emerged in recent years – possibly a fusion of Ken’s experience of alternating between painting and sculpture – which provide an even greater richness for the eye and brain to explore. Some of these leave the mind stretching back – as though trying to recall an ancient word it has forgotten - and drawing one back again and again to gaze at the work, as if doing so will suddenly reveal the word and its secret meaning.
For those visitors who, like me, have also grown to love the island, buying a Draper to take home can be like having a visual umbilical cord stretching back across the seas – one collector has described a session of looking at Ken’s work on the wall of his home, or in the books and catalogues, as leaving him with the same sense of freshness and renewal that taking a walk through beautiful Menorcan countryside evokes.
As the best selling author and director of Castlegate House Gallery, Cumbria, Chris Wadsworth wrote after her first visit to Menorca, “I have enjoyed Ken’s paintings for many years seeing them as abstract pieces, full of emotion, light, and colour. Their origin was not relevant or important. It was therefore a Damascus moment on entering a remote cave in an overgrown canyon to see “my” painting suddenly above me. This then happened many times at places Ken has named Red Rocks, The Lunar landscape, and the cathedral-like quarries from which neighboring towns were built. It was a magical experience to find these places.”
Amongst those who live on the island, either as a second home or as native Menorcans, there is a steadily growing band of collectors and admirers of Draper’s work. When one meets these people and talks about the work, there is a sense of instant connection and rapport – a happy exchange in which it becomes clear that all cultures and backgrounds meet in the essential and universal appreciation of art which speaks to the heart, eye and soul.
If you are interested in seeing more of Kenneth Draper’s work by appointment at his home in Es Castell, please telephone 971 353 457 or email drapermacalpine@terra.es.
Stand 63. Over 20 of Kenneth Draper’s works were on display at the London fair
Kenneth Draper RA, distinguished artist, Royal Academician and resident of Es Castell, had a very successful Solo show at the prestigious “Art London” fair early this October. This liveliest of all London art fairs brought historically significant work by key Modern British and Twentieth Century Artists into juxtaposition with work by leading artists from China, India, Australia, and Japan.
It is an annual event and attracts visitors and galleries from all over the world. This year there were over sixty galleries participating showing a wide selection of figurative and abstract works. Ken exhibited with Lisa Sharpe Contemporary Art and hers was one of only six galleries dedicated to a single artist. Lisa Sharpe is an artists agent who works with a number of Royal Academicians and also sources 20th Century Modern masters such as Picasso, Miro, Mattise, Warhol and Zadkine.
The Gala Opening on 7th October was attended by hundreds of art lovers who braved a cold wet evening to make their way to Chelsea to be greeted by the sight of literally thousands of art works in the mediums of painting, sculpture and glass in a beautiful custom built spacious environment. It was an amazing event which continued until 12th October and was seen by thousands of collectors, dealers and an ever increasing interested public.
Ken’s exhibition on Stand 63, consisted of over twenty works including a large oil-pastel, inspired by the waterfalls of his native Yorkshire. The main body of the work however captured elements of the intense light, vivid colour and rugged beauty of the landscape of Menorca, which has been the main inspiration for his work for over twenty years. It certainly brought the warmth of the Mediterranean to a cold October London night.
Born to a mining family on the border between Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, northern England in 1944, Ken emerged as a talented youngster who was encouraged by his family to complete his schooling at Chesterfield College of Art and in 1962 moved to London to study painting at Kingston School of Art, followed by three years in the Sculpture department at the Royal College of Art, Kensington.
At the age of 20 his work attracted the interest of The Redfern Gallery in London who in 1924 had given debut exhibitions to Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Ken had his first group show with them in 1965 and his first Solo exhibition in 1969. Even at this early stage in his career he had started combining the illusions more associated with painting into three dimensional structures, which has been a continuing thread over forty years. The other important thread which has continually run through his work is a constant response to Landscape. He has exhibited in many major survey exhibitions of contemporary art both with painting and sculpture, such as the “British Sculptors of the 20th Century” exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery London in 1985 and in 1992 “The poetic trace: Aspects of British Abstraction since 1945” held at the Adellson Galleries, New York, where he showed alongside only the most germane British painters who included Lanyon, Hodgkin, Hitchins, and Clough.
As writer Colin Roth has said “Kenneth Draper’s work hangs in some of the great art galleries of the world as well as in the best of homes, and has been exhibited in many countries including, besides Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Argentina, the United States of America and Japan. Everywhere it hangs, everywhere his art is seen, it is cherished for its humanity and its challenge, the gorgeousness of its surface and the profound depths which lurk beneath. Life is richer for its presence.”
In 1991 he received the great accolade of being elected to membership of the Royal Academy whose members are some of the greatest names in contemporary British art. There are only ever eighty Royal Academicians, each of them elected by their peers when an Academician dies, or is promoted to the status of “Senior Academician” on reaching the age of seventy-five.
Past Academicians include John Constable, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and J.M.W. Turner, while current RA’s include well-known figures such as David Hockney, Tracy Emin, John Hoyland and the sculptor Anthony Gormley (who was one of Ken’s former students when he was a tutor at Goldsmith’s College in the 1970’s).
It is no surprise that a coal miner’s son born near Sheffield should take every opportunity to travel in search of the landscape wonders of the world. Those travels have taken Ken to Egypt, East Africa, India and the canyons of the south western United States of America as well as across Europe. In 1985 he first visited Menorca with his wife, the photographer-artist Jean Macalpine, and the emotional connection and love of this unique island was virtually instantaneous. Returning again and again over the years. Ken often talks of its “spiritual energy”, its “piercing and constantly emerging beauty” which he refers to as “awesome and constantly surprising”.
It has often been noted that people looking at Ken’s work will be drawn in, sometimes to become lost as their eyes scan the myriad forms, textures, colours and nuances of light and tone – almost like those who have scaled a height to observe the land below from a vantage point can become momentarily transfixed by the spacious beauty of what they behold.
Some of the Menorcan references in the work seem clear – the gorgeous, swirling blues and deep, limpid stillness of a picture inspired by snorkeling the pristine waters which wash the island’s rocky coast. The almost delirious intensity as every close relative of the red end of the spectrum scorches the surface of a work created in the shimmering, rock-splitting heat of August, or the vast spaces conjured by the interplay of form, light and shadow – seeking to grasp the ephemeral play of dawn light in one of the island’s abandoned quarries…..
Other works contain references which are not so clear – especially the complexities of the “Constructions on Paper” which have emerged in recent years – possibly a fusion of Ken’s experience of alternating between painting and sculpture – which provide an even greater richness for the eye and brain to explore. Some of these leave the mind stretching back – as though trying to recall an ancient word it has forgotten - and drawing one back again and again to gaze at the work, as if doing so will suddenly reveal the word and its secret meaning.
For those visitors who, like me, have also grown to love the island, buying a Draper to take home can be like having a visual umbilical cord stretching back across the seas – one collector has described a session of looking at Ken’s work on the wall of his home, or in the books and catalogues, as leaving him with the same sense of freshness and renewal that taking a walk through beautiful Menorcan countryside evokes.
As the best selling author and director of Castlegate House Gallery, Cumbria, Chris Wadsworth wrote after her first visit to Menorca, “I have enjoyed Ken’s paintings for many years seeing them as abstract pieces, full of emotion, light, and colour. Their origin was not relevant or important. It was therefore a Damascus moment on entering a remote cave in an overgrown canyon to see “my” painting suddenly above me. This then happened many times at places Ken has named Red Rocks, The Lunar landscape, and the cathedral-like quarries from which neighboring towns were built. It was a magical experience to find these places.”
Amongst those who live on the island, either as a second home or as native Menorcans, there is a steadily growing band of collectors and admirers of Draper’s work. When one meets these people and talks about the work, there is a sense of instant connection and rapport – a happy exchange in which it becomes clear that all cultures and backgrounds meet in the essential and universal appreciation of art which speaks to the heart, eye and soul.
If you are interested in seeing more of Kenneth Draper’s work by appointment at his home in Es Castell, please telephone 971 353 457 or email drapermacalpine@terra.es.
