Eyeballing Nature:
The Paintings of
Edward Stone
by
Ian Beck
At first or casual glance the paintings
of Edward Stone might seem to fit into the same category
as the movement dating from the 1970s known as Photorealism.
His images have that same almost uncanny sense of accuracy,
a kind of frozen ‘realism’, (a word which Nabokov said
should always be shown with inverted commas). The photorealist
artists such as Robert Cottingham and Chuck Close achieved
their effects through a meticulous process of copying
and image transferrence. They treated the photograph
with the same reverence as artists of previous centuries
had treated nature. They would either take or select
a photograph, sometimes at random, and then meticulously
copy it in every detail through a process of projection
and tracing. They accurately reproduced the surface effects
of an already two dimensional image. The results were
technically impressive in an almost cinematic sense.
The images were often at a large museum scale. Their
paintings also came as a shock to the system, almost
a corrective during the first era of conceptualism and
minimalism. Much ‘realist’ painting in the decades that
followed have used the same method. It is often possible
in the resulting paintings to spot which lens the original
photograph was taken on.
A close study of Edward Stone’s paintings
on the other hand will reveal that he achieves his version
of ‘realism’ through what David Hockney describes as
‘eyeballing’. That is through looking and then patiently
transcibing freehand in paint the scene in front of him.Through
hand and eye he confronts the scene. Not with the eye
of a single camera lens but with human eyes. Thus we
have all the subtle little oddities of perception and
perspective which arise from transcribing stereoscopic
vision on to the flat surface of a canvas. The subtle
distorting effects of looking both down and up and reconciling
the various viewpoints into a single image. An act of
prolonged and careful calculation and perception compared
to the tracing of the flattened outlines of a photograph.
In one of Stone’s several homages to the painter Chardin,
this way of working produces almost vertiginous effects.
A knife facing outwards balanced on the very edge of
a white tablecloth. Its accompanying metal tray pushed
just slightly too far over the edge beside it. Below
the table a white enamel vessel holds wine bottles and
this is seen in a shift of perspective from above. The
table edge is seen from almost eye level. The two viewpoints
are seamlessly blended.
The simple white cloth and scattered
objects feature in several of Stone’s paintings. The
tables might be laid laid with fish, upturned wine glasses,
loaves of bread, (in one bravura passage the bread is
wrapped in lovingly rendered transparent cellophane)
scattered leaves, cheese fruit or vegetables, terracotta
jugs also feature. These paintings act as a kind of homage
to 17th c still life painting and especially to Chardin.
There are however other ideas and expressions at play
in these complex pictures than just a nostalgia for past
art. There are occasional and playful juxtapositions.
Incongrous objects, a tin toy monkey or a primitive leopard
mask or African fetish might be added in among the more
traditional still life subjects. These, along with the
oddities of the hard won eyeball perspective, serve to
undermine what might at first appear to be conventional
still life groupings and compositions. These paintings
are not just harking back. Far from it, the artist is
recording what is around him, what enthuses him and the
day to day passage of time. He is measuring out his hours.
Stone’s
pictures can be roughly divided into three or four main
areas: in the summer he paints landscapes, either in
Dorset or of the Poitou in France. In winter he paints
inside, Still lives and interiors, mainly of his cottage
in Dorset and portraiture. The portraits are the rarer
among his output and are often oblique. They are barely
portraits at all, sometimes the glimpse of a face caught
in a mirror at the very edge of an interior. That face
may be turned away or absorbed in reading. The subject
appears to take no interest in the viewer nor are they
presented as subject to the viewer. The portrait subject
is often seen from the other side of a room, distanced.
Once again absorbed in some activity other than posing
whether reading or using a laptop computer. The portraits
are almost incidental to the larger subject which might
appear to be the room itself. There are self portraits
too. Equally oblique in most cases. The artist is caught
in a mirror at the side of the image or in the act of
painting itself. In a very few cases the artist confronts
the viewer directly in a self portrait but these are
rare. There is no vanity in these images just a desire
to present a kind of unvarnished truth.
Edward Stone
was born in 1940. The eldest son of Reynolds and Janet
Stone. His father was a distinguished engraver. letter
cutter, and water colour painter. His mother the last
of the great Edwardian hostesses and a fine photographer.
They lived at an 18th c Old Rectory in remote West
Dorset. The house became a kind of literary and artistic
salon and Stone grew up surrounded by a selection of
mid 20th century cultural figures of many kinds. Ranging
from Iris Murdoch and John Bayley to Kenneth Clark,
and John and Myfanwy Piper. Thus he was exposed to
enlightened discourse of many kinds. However he was
also as a teenager inclined to be contrary. The writer
Sylvia Townsend Warner lived nearby and took a keen
interest in him she liked and admired his contrariness.
In the 1950s Reynolds Stone took on an assistant cum
apprentice Michael Harvey. He played Jazz records on
a gramophone while working on lettering projects in
the barn behind the main house. He introduced Stone
to Jazz and developed his interest. Here was a cultural
pursuit that was not shared with his parents, here
was something of his own. His love and deep knowledge
of jazz is evident in several of the paintings. An
assembly on the familiar Stone cottage table top of
jazz CD’s and various blue objects all arranged on
a blue cloth acts as a tribute to the record label
Blue Note. Other still lives include a saxophone a
violin and in one or two cases photographs of another
of his cultural heroes Charlie Parker.
There are many
tributes and homages to Stone’s favourite painters
scattered throughout his work, some overt and some
oblique. The already noted Chardin often features,
but there are also references to Daumier and to Corot
in Stone’s French landscapes. Vermeer and Piero Della
Francesca feature too. The references may be as straightforward
as the inclusion of an art book displaying the particular
artist spread out open on the table or perhaps postcards
or larger reproductions pinned up on the painted wall
behind.
Stone lives in
a cottage close to his parents ex house and garden.
This is the same landscape that sustained his father’s
art and now often informs his own. Much of his dense
and closely observed Dorset landscapes share the same
intensity of vision as his father’s late watercolours
and more especially of his wood engravings made from
them. The same enclosed spaces. The same picture plane
bounded by trees, branches and leaves. Stone lives
alone and many of the pictures express this state.
Two or three of the white tablecloth pictures for instance
show an empty table stark white against the dark green
background of the wall behind. In two instances the
table is seen in close up detail and the flat surface
of the white cloth is broken by nothing except a single
streak of low light crossing the cloth perhaps from
a near window. This sense of a reduction to basics
is a new and powerful phase in Stone’s art.
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