Ian Grose
Small Paintings
This catalogue brings together Ian Grose's portraits - of people he knows, mostly from university or art school - and a few small landscapes, observed from the window of his apartment. In an accompanying text, Grose describes the body of work as emerging from an encounter with some of the precursors and descendants of the Impressionists:
I was compelled by a vitality of mark-making, a kind of counterintuitive description of form. Looking at the pictures close-up, the categories of abstract and representational seemed to dissolve; I really understood how these painters prefigured the Abstract Expressionists in their focus on the autonomous qualities of the mark itself. I also began to think that an appreciation of the meaning of the pictures had to take into account the conditions of making them from direct observation.
He began making quick paintings from life, according to a set of rules; this was then extended to portraits, which he would photograph and upload to his tumblr (www.iangrose.tumblr.com), accompanied by a date and descriptive title - the simple presentation of which is echoed in this catalogue.
Published by Stevenson | Catalogue 84, June 2015
Softcover, 80 pages | Unavailable
