THE OLDIE BRITISH AWARDS (OBA) PAY TRIBUTE TO ARTISTS OVER 60 IN BRITAIN
I love this picture---instead of painting the sexpot slouching seductively on the settee, he is painting the word OBA (Oldie British Artist)!
IN OUR MODERN WORLD THAT PLACES SUCH EMPHASIS ON YOUTH AND ALL THINGS YOUTHFUL, THOSE OVER 60 MAY BE EXCUSED FOR FEELING AS IF THEY ARE OVER THE HILL AND UNDER THE TURNSTILE AND SHOULD BE PUT OUT TO PASTURE AND MAYBE ORDER AN URN.
But not all is lost and many ancient dinosaurs over 60 may still have some mileage left, especially in Britain where the oldies seem to go on and on and last forever!
Case in point; the Oldie British Artists Awards organised by The Oldie magazine opened only to those over 60 aka OAP (Old Age Pensioners) on their last legs...
No, I am just being naughty but suffice to say the over-60s these days are as feisty and tough as nails and will probably outlast younger ones who gorge on fast food and drugs and are permanently stressed.
This is such a brilliant idea and dedicated to those who have painted all their lives or have recently discovered the joys of painting.
I think The Oldie Magazine should have a Malaysian edition and organise OMA Awards as in Oldie Malaysian Artists Award! Malaysia is surely and slowly becoming an aging nation and this is an entirely new genre in Malaysia where tottering oldies are put in Old Folks Home and forgotten. Unless they are very rich in which case it is worse as their heirs are probably praying for their speedy demise.
The Oldie British Awards is sponsored by Ecclesiastical, the specialist heritage and fine arts insurer. For latest info; www.ecclesiastical.com/oba/index.aspx
The
2012 OBA Award
Exhibited
in London
The shortlist for the inaugural Oldie British
Artists Award (OBA), launched earlier this year by The Oldie magazine
and specialist heritage and fine art insurer Ecclesiastical, has been drawn
up. In true Oldie style, and following great deliberation by the
judging panel, the works of eleven artists have been selected, instead of the
originally planned shortlist of ten, and these will be on public view at St
Mary-le-Bow Church, London, from 8 to 12 October prior to the award
ceremony on 16 October.
The eleven over-60s artists, whose works
will be on display and now go through to a second round of judging in
September, are:
- Gerry Dudgeon, Beaminster, Dorset
- Anny Evason, St Leonards on Sea,
- Mac Gregory,
- Henry Hagger,
- Suzan Swale,
- Elizabeth Vibert,
- Giles Winter,
- Sheila Wood, Claverton, Nottinghamshire
- Marjorie Wrentmore,
- Donald Zec,
Entries for the OBA Award closed on 31
July 2012 and the organisers have been delighted with the enthusiastic response
in its first year. Over 300 figurative paintings were submitted by
artists from around the country, from the Shetland Islands to the Isle of Wight .
The judging panel, chaired by painter
and sculptor Maggi Hambling CBE and including Richard Ingrams, Editor of The
Oldie, Huon Mallalieu, Arts Correspondent of Country Life, Philip Athill of
Abbott and Holder Gallery, and Clare Pardy, Fine Art Underwriting Manager at
Ecclesiastical, now faces the challenge of selecting the winner of the
competition in a second round of judging which will take place in
September. The winner of the first ever Oldie British Artists Award will
then be announced on 16 October at a glamorous event at the
English Speaking Union in London
Richard Ingrams, Editor of The Oldie,
commented on this year’s submissions: “The standard of the entries was
amazing and the Award received an excellent response in its first year.
The best part with all the entries was the fact that there wasn’t a drop of
formaldehyde in sight.”
Clare Pardy, Fine Art Underwriting
Manager at Ecclesiastical, added: “Our thinking behind the Award was to shine a
light on not only people who have painted all their lives but also those who
have discovered painting in their later years. Gratifyingly, the
competition has stimulated some very impressive examples from all sorts of
artists which is thrilling.”
The Award was launched in March 2012 to
celebrate the work of artists aged 60+ and as a counterblast to the unmade beds
of the YBAs (Young British Artists). 2012 also marks major milestones for
the founders of the Award: The Oldie’s 20th and
Ecclesiastical’s 125th anniversaries. The winner of this
year’s Award will receive a cash prize of £5,000 and an opportunity to exhibit
their work at London
Exhibition details: The
Shortlist for the 2012 OBA Award
Dates:
Monday 8 October to Friday 12 October
Location:
St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, London
Opening hours:
Monday to Wednesday, 7.30 am to 6 pm
Thursday, 7.30 am to 6.30 pm
Friday, 7.30 am to 4 pm
Award Ceremony: Tuesday
16 October 2012 (by invitation)
Venue:
English
Speaking Union, London
__________________________________________
About The Oldie
Launched in 1992, The Oldie is a
monthly magazine with an emphasis on good writing, humour and quality
illustration. Now in its 21st year, the magazine boasts a
circulation of 41,000 and attracts some of the country’s best writers,
illustrators and cartoonists as contributors every month. The magazine,
edited by former Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams, offers its readers
reviews of arts and books, great features, independent opinions and much more.
About
Ecclesiastical
Ecclesiastical is a specialist insurer
of heritage buildings and fine art, charities, the education, care and faith
sectors. Founded in 1887 to provide insurance for the Anglican Church, it
now offers a wide range of commercial insurances as well as home and travel
insurance, selling through brokers and directly. Ecclesiastical also
offers a range of ethically screened investment funds and has a team of
Independent Financial Advisers.
The 2012 OBA Award Shortlist
Coombes and Copses
Gerry Dudgeon, Beaminster, Dorset
Born in Darjeeling, India in 1952, Gerry Dudgeon studied
painting at Camberwell School of Art, London (BA Hons)
and Reading University (MFA) and has lived in West
Dorset since 1987 where he draws inspiration from the
drama of its steep hills and hidden valleys. He
particularly likes walking through this landscape in
winter, when the bare bones of its structure are more
evident, especially after snowfall, and makes small
studies which are then transposed into abstracted
paintings and drawings back in the studio. Dudgeon is
interested in the way that the land has been shaped by
geological forces and ancient fossil forms which lie
beneath the surface. He investigates the link between
natural and man-made forms and invites the viewer to
take a journey along linear pathways, hedgerows and
field boundaries, past dark copses, to the distant
horizon. Like an archaeologist, he scrapes back and
scratches the paint surface to reveal underlying layers.
Dudgeon was awarded a travelling scholarship to New
York by the Slade School of Art and to India by the
University of Surrey. His paintings are in private
collections in Spain, Kuwait, India, the USA and the UK.
He is currently represented by Bath Contemporary
Gallery, the Arthouse Gallery, Bournemouth, the Jerram
Gallery, Sherborne and Quantum Contemporary Art,
London and runs occasional painting workshops from his
spacious West Dorset studio.
Untitled
Anny Evason, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex
Born in 1951, after graduating with a BA Fine Art from
Brighton College of Art in 1973, Anny moved to Australia
where she spent thirteen years travelling, painting and
drawing and working in theatre. She designed and
painted sets and costumes for several theatre
companies in Sydney including the Nimrod Theatre Co.
and The Australian Opera. She continued designing for
the theatre in the UK whilst also selling her work to
private and corporate clients. Since 2000, she has been
designing outside spaces, private and public, teaching,
and developing her thoughts about landscape through
painting and drawing.
Evason tends to concentrate on ordinary objects or
seemingly commonplace parts of our surrounding
landscape, a single tree, a patch of weeds, an allotment
shed, as these unpromising subjects can yield up hidden
glories of texture, colour and line which will translate into
a mood, a sense of place. She likes to blur the edges,
physically and metaphorically, to register the ambiguity
and enigmatic quality of much of what we encounter day
to day.
Wild Sunset, 10 x 75 cm
Mac Gregory, Boston, Lincolnshire
Born in Stony, Stratford in 1934, Mac studied at
Cambridge School of Art, Chelsea School of Art and
Goldsmiths School of Art. Although born in
Buckinghamshire, Mac became an ‘honorary Fenman’ in
the 1950s. Two Fenlanders have strongly influenced his
feelings for this flat landscape; the painter Anthony Day,
whom he met at art school in Cambridge, and his friend
for more than 50 years, the writer and poet, Edward
Storey.
Mac has exhibited widely in the UK, including the Royal
Academy, the Mall Galleries and the RBA. He has also
exhibited in Holland, Germany and the USA. His private
commissions have included murals for the London home
of the late Lord and Lady Silkin and a painting
commissioned by the Football Association, marking the
15 years’ chairmanship of Sir Bert Millichip. His works
have been acquired by the Cambridge Education
Committee, Surrey Education Committee, Greater
London Council, Avon Cosmetics and Marks & Spencer.
Mac began developing his stretched horizontal
landscapes in the 1950s and ‘60s, which echo the long
horizons of the Fens. His philosophy is simple: “I paint”.
Signs of the Times
Henry Hagger, London
Born in London on Trafalgar Day in 1946 , Hagger’s
working career has been varied, from a shelf-stacker,
bookmaker’s board boy, office boy, student, builder’s
labourer, site agent’s gopher, architectural assistant,
architect, burger van man, satirical poet (unpaid), artist,
market trader, visiting lecturer, adult education teacher,
and printmaker.
Hagger paints, draws and prints in most media;
watercolour, pastel, acrylic, oil, charcoal, pencil, various
types of etching and lithography. His work has been
exhibited in Paris at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts and
L’Orangerie, and in London at the Whitechapel, the
Serpentine Gallery, the Mall Galleries, The Royal
Institute of British Architects, the Royal Academy of Arts,
Leeds City Art Gallery and Bristol Art Gallery. He has
also exhibited with New English Art Club, Pastel Society,
Royal Society of British Artists, Society of Graphic Fine
Art, Camden Printmakers, and the Barbican Library has
hosted two one-man shows. He has been a finalist five
times in the Laing Landscape Competition, twice in the
Sunday Times /Singer and Friedlander Watercolour
Competition, and once in the Department of Transport
and the Discerning Eye competitions.
“I happily divide my time between painting and
printmaking, and teaching adults to draw and paint. My
view of the artist, of whatever their chosen art form, is
that they should try to open up the perception of our
world for others.”
HOW BRIGHT THE LAND IS
Adrian Hemming, London
Born in Leicester in 1945, Adrian Hemming left school at
fifteen to become an engineer. Following his
apprenticeship, he travelled widely in Europe and
developed an appreciation of landscape and a love of
art. On returning to England, Adrian was accepted onto
the Foundation Course at Lincoln College of Art. His BA
was completed at Brighton Polytechnic (1973) and his
MA at Goldsmiths College, University of London (1982).
He co-founded Tichbourne Studios in Brighton and later
founded the Angel Studios in London. He went on to
establish Southgate Studios in the East End where he
has been painting full time since 1990.
Adrian has twice been short-listed for the Artist in
Residence at the National Gallery, London. He has
lectured and exhibited widely in England, Scotland,
America and South Africa. His work can be found in
many private and public collections as well as being on
public view in Terminal One, Heathrow Airport, as a
result of a major commission by BAA.
My masters, are you mad? Portrait of my
accountant Robert Coward
Acrylic on canvas
Suzan Swale, London
Suzan studied at Bristol Polytechnic (Dip AD) and the
Royal College of Art (MA in Painting). She has taught at
numerous art colleges and universities, including
Northern Ireland, Manchester and Central Saint Martin’s.
Currently she teaches part-time at Morley College,
London. Her home and studio are in Tufnell Park.
Suzan is a member of the London Group of Artists and
also a committee member of the Group. She has
exhibited extensively in one-person and group
exhibitions throughout the UK and abroad. Her work is
in numerous public and private collections, including the
Grabowski Collection in the Sztuki Museum in Poland,
the BBC and Carlisle City Art Gallery. Forthcoming
exhibitions include Pop Art in Europe, Museum Het
Valkhof, Nijmegan, the Netherlands, 8 September 2012
to 6 January 2013; Self Portrait exhibition at the
Cumberland Hotel, London, September 2012; Pitzhanger
Manor Gallery and House, London, January 2013.
Painting is the backbone of all her work. She has made
installations, used video and was part of a successful
performance group for eight years, but these always
refer back and coincide with what is going on in her
painting. Colour, composition and drawing are very
important in her work.
7a. UNTITLED
Elizabeth Vibert, Bristol
Born and brought up in Bristol, where she still lives,
Elizabeth Vibert is a self-taught artist, having taken up
painting after an earlier career as a novelist. Her work
has evolved from its initial naïve phase, through large
mythologically-themed canvases, to its present style, of
which intense colours and enigmatic narrative
undertones are the chief characteristics. Her current
painting draws on dreams, the subconscious, and a love
of both the Symbolists and the Ruralists for inspiration.
Her numerous solo and group exhibitions include the
Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, the Portal Gallery,
RoNA, and Sweetwaters Gallery, London, the Delahaye
Gallery, Cirencester, the Primavera Gallery, Cambridge,
the Theatre Royal, Bath, the Eye, Rooksmoor and
Colchis Galleries, Bristol, the Royal West of England
Academy (Autumn Exhibitions and the New Gallery), and
the South West Academy of Fine and Applied Art,
Exeter.
Topiary Mass at Austin House
Giles Winter, London
Born in 1947 in Gravesend, Kent, Giles Winter was
educated and ‘Art Schooled’ in Cheltenham, which he
remembers as being very Edwardian in style. It made a
strong impression on him and he later made several
paintings of the town’s cafés and restaurants. After
training as a teacher at Goldsmiths College, London, he
taught Art and Design at Sydenham School, a large
comprehensive in South London. While teaching at
Sydenham, he made a connection with a Belgian gallery
and began regularly exhibiting there in 1976.
The subject matter of his paintings has always been
representational. The bodies of work have seemed to
develop naturally from one to the next and almost always
with a strong use of perspective. Cafés and restaurants
to other interiors, railway carriages, ocean liners and, for
several years now, parks and gardens, have had an
enduring interest for him. He enjoys the way that the
formal structure imposed on nature is softened by growth
patterns. The world of topiary also fascinates and as a
keen gardener he is conscious of the connections
between painting and creating with nature. Painting is
always a challenge which continues to captivate him.
Sunday Morning
Sheila Wood, Claverton, Nottinghamshire
Born and brought up in Calverton, an ex-mining village in
Nottinghamshire, Sheila Wood has not really strayed
very far. She studied first at Mansfield School of Art and
then graduated in 1970 from Camberwell School of Art
where her happiest times were when life-drawing
or printmaking.
For her, there has always been an addictive magic in the
power that a simple line has to describe form and
capture the essence of a physical or imagined presence.
Drawing was her first love, but she has gradually been
wooed by the tactile qualities of paint – or in fact any goo
that could be made to adhere to a surface long enough
to be pushed about, scraped off, scratched and
tormented into revealing the object or figure waiting to
emerge. She tries to comment on the mundane, quiet
drama of the human condition. Sometimes her work
verges on abstraction or is totally imagined, but she
always has to recharge her batteries with a meditative,
closely observed still life.
London
Marjorie Wrentmore, London
Having studied ceramics in the 1960s at Barnet College,
Marjorie went on to open a pottery studio specialising in
hand-thrown domestic ware. Following retirement, she
studied sculpture at City Lit College transitioning from
clay to wood and a variety of stone.
Her work is particularly inspired by the human figure,
exploring how textures, such as limestone or the tactile
smoothness of alabaster, achieve dramatically different
effects of form. Eight years ago her work diversified to
take in painting and mixed media work, combining the
sculptural and painted to create two-dimensional
canvases and sculptural painting.
The London picture was inspired by the events in 2012
that made the city the focus of global attention, such as
the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics. The piece
collides London’s iconic architecture with a romance for
a place so many call home.
Untitled
Donald Zec, London
Donald Zec, London
Donald Zec, 93, is a former journalist and author whose
late brother, Philip Zec, was the famous political
cartoonist of the Second World War and the subject of
Donald's latest biography.
Donald took up painting less than five years ago while
grieving over the death of his wife Frances, after a 66-
year-long marriage. The outcome was cathartic. “The
grief remained,” said Donald, '”but the gloom receded
while I pinned on the 'L' plates, discovered the fast-track
delights of acrylics and the tactile thrill of splashing paint
on canvas – only ruining two shirts and a pair of favourite
corduroys in the process.”
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