Western Morning News (Saturday)
Lasting legacy from time spent in pursuit of perfection
Frank Ruhrmund sees an exhibition which pays tribute to the Camberwell School of Art
Many will recall the exhibition organised jointly by the St Ives Society of Artists and the Belgrave Gallery, then still in its gallery in Fore Street, St Ives, held there in 2015 in celebration of “40 Years of Painting” by the staff and students at Camberwell School of Art. The connection between that establishment and the Belgrave Gallery, now based at Higher Bussow Farm, Towednack, near St Ives, is a close one. Michael Gaca, the Belgrave’s director, happens to have been a student at the Camberwell in the 1970’s, something he has never forgotten and remembers with shows by its teachers and students, like the one now being held there. Comprised of 44 works by 33 artists, several of whom have been, and still are, familiar figures in Penwith. One of them is Michael Strang who, sadly, died in April last year aged 78.
Born in Berkshire, he began his long career in art as a student in the late 1960’s at the Wimbledon and Camberwell Schools of Art, where he was always grateful for having come under the tutelage of such as David Poole, President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and Royal Academicians Anthony Eyton and Ben Levine. While he acknowledged their influence, he also cheerfully confessed to being influenced by such as Constable and Courbet, Sickert and Soutine, and most of all, by Turner. In common with such masters, he spent much of his time in pursuit of perfection, and when a student passed countless hours studying the magic of the perfect image, and some 50 years or so later was still looking for perfect tonal values. Something, as he once said, that was equivalent to perfect pitch in music and very rare in painting. It is the intensity of that search, not to mention his integrity, which makes his paintings so immediately impressive. An artist for whom no day was complete unless he spent at least part of it before his easel, he produced thousands of paintings during his long career, and exhibited widely. He reckoned that he had shown his work in more than 90 public and private galleries and museums, from Tate St Ives to the Royal Academy. While his production rate was all but astronomical, so too, was his standard. He held the classicist’s belief in excellence and the value of sound technique, and in his pursuit of the purity of form went back to basics while performing a balancing act between the rational and the rash, the emotion and the individual’s sovereign right of expression.
Whatever the medium he happened to be working in, the evidence of Victorian values were ever present in all that he did. Elected only shortly before his untimely death as an honorary member of the St Ives Society of Artists, he was no stranger to good causes and throughout the years had given a number of his paintings to help raise funds for various charities. A generosity of spirit only to be expected from one who admitted to finding the humble dandelion to be as magnificent as the most elevated flower. One who possessed poetry as well as painting in his soul, he was not only an exceptional artist but also an extraordinary person. His nocturnal study Porthmeor Beach, Moon & Stars in this show is a moving reminder of how much he is still missed.
An exhibition which pays tribute to the standard of tuition at Camberwell School of Art, among the many impressive works here are those by other artists with connections with this part of the world, from Terry Frost’s Untitled: Female Figure Studies; Alice Mumford’s Orange Peel & Roses; Felicity Mara’s Pink Flowers on Yellow; to John Charles Clark’s Sleeping Nude. Well worth a visit, this exhibition is at the Belgrave Gallery, Towednack, near St Ives, until March 14.