After the fire came the water
Last year a devastating fire destroyed artist Nick Schlee’s Upper Basildon home and studio. He moved into a temporary flat in Pangbourne by the river where he was inspired by the play of light on the water. The resulting work is going on show in London
AFTER the fire came the water – Dazzling Water – writes arts editor TRISH LEE.
A disastrous fire completely destroyed Nick Schlee’s Upper Basildon studio and home last year and he had to move to a flat until the house is rebuilt.
Very fortunately the flat is 40 metres from the edge of the fast-flowing river Pang where it joins the slowmoving Thames at Pangbourne.
The meeting of the two rivers has made a dynamic new subject for the painter, especially when the bright sun hits the choppy water surface and dazzles the eye. The oil paintings and drawings he has made in the past year are the subject of an exhibition Dazzling Water, at London’s Gallery 8, 8 Duke Street St, James’s, from Monday, September 5, to Friday, September 9, 10am to 6pm.
Usually painters paint water just as the camera captures it, recording how it looks in a fraction of a second. The image is frozen. The person looking at the pictures probably recognises the image as one of a sequence they have themselves have seen, whether a slow swirl reflected on a swimming pool bottom or the spitting spray on the crest of a wave. Their memory fills in the blanks either side of that frozen moment.
Nick Schlee tells me that when he tried to single out one particular moment to record in paint he found his eye darted about the water’s surface without stopping, distracted from one flash of the sun to another even more inviting.
His eyes were led “a merry dance across a myriad of attractions” and he found it difficult to assimilate exactly what he was looking at.
His solution was to assemble a conglomeration of pastel strokes that suggested the rapid moves his eyes had to make when surveying various portions of the turmoil of movement before them.
The result is a chaos of unpredictable lines and curves of direction scattered over the whole. I hope people who try to sort out the chaos of brush strokes of these pictures, which are so full of energy, will feel much the same agitated excitement Schlee’s own eyes must have enjoyed. Mine certainly did! Nick Schlee is best known for his atmospheric pictures of the Ridgeway and has more than 30 paintings in public collections including the City of London Guildhall Gallery, the River and Rowing Museum and county museum galleries in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Lancashire. www.nickschlee.co.uk
Nick Schlee was born in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1931. He left school at 17 and joined a London advertising agency.
After National Service, he returned to his day job in London. But then went on to read English at Oxford University where his talent for art was recognised by the Dean of the college and his prospective tutor, who felt it was good to have an artist in the college to help create a balanced community.
After university, in 1955, Schlee went to work in New York for a large advertising agency and he studied part time at the Art Students League. Painting continued to be a passion of Schlee’s throughout his career in business and, working back in the UK he went on to study at The Slade. It wasn’t until the age of 58 in 1989 that he turned to full-time painting. During the 90s through to today he has had regular solo exhibitions in London and around the country including Edinburgh and Oxford.
... when he tried to single out one particular moment to record in paint he found his eye darted about the water’s surface without stopping, distracted from one flash of the sun to another even more inviting