Thimgan Discovers Vanessa Bell

Jan 20

I have apparently been living under a blanket of ignorance, for it was only today that I discovered the art of Vanessa (Stephen) Bell, older sister to Virginia (Stephen) Woolf.

Sort of like those YouTube reaction muckbang vids or the ones where we watch a musician listen and emote to a popular song or artist that they’ve sheepishly admitted to never having tried (I love watching reaction videos of BTS, a South Korean K-Pop group<3), I enjoy watching myself sort through what grabs me about this new-to-me artist whom I should have known about.

I’m mildly obsessed about connections in the art world. My concept of connections could be actual real-world friendships or simply influence.

A Vanessa Bell still life I am smitten with.

My thoughts when I saw a thumbnail of this still life went like this…

“Ohhhhh! My eyes are devouring this feast! Look at those colors and the composition, it’s so beautiful!”
“This almost rougher, modernistic, imperfect realism (rudely put) is such a relief after seeing too many AI images. The whole AI thing is what’s been sending me toward painting pieces that can’t be mistaken for doctored photographs or computer generated images.”
“I can totally see the relationship between her paintings and other favorite painters of mine from the same time, Sir William Nicholson and Dame Laura Knight. They also have a Cezanne casualness to them.”

Personally, I think the modern era brought fun color and pattern to still life. Moderns were less concerned with adhering to reality. As a student I was vexed by the idea that maybe they could not paint something to look real and were passing it off as style. I no longer care about that. It became enough to know that I had the ability to paint in a lifelike manner, whether I choose to paint that way became a choice.

While looking at website and blog posts about Vanessa Bell, I also saw this thumbnail (below). I love, love, love the BBC show Fake or Fortune? with Philip Mould. He’s got quite a lovely website, you might check it out here. I was able to watch the older episodes of the show on YouTube.

From left to right we’ve got Sir William Nicholson, Vanessa Bell, Dame Laura Knight, Paul Cezanne.

Below are a couple of Thimgan original paintings which have a similar aesthetic. I enjoy cutting loose with color now and again as well as the odd angles one can take with still life. These are tumbling forward compositions which feel naturalistic to me. It’s as we commonly see fruit and veg in the kitchen, not on a display stand, but below us on a table or butcher’s block.

I’d love to hear any remarks you may have on the artworks or artists shown here!