Claire Langdown In Colour

A quiet corner of an epic painting by J. M. W. Turner has inspired artist Claire Langdown so much, she has returned to it many times in her own work. Her new exhibition, In Colour, features paintings from her series ‘Turner’s Corner’, alongside pieces from ‘Colourworks’, a related group in which she explores colour, light and form.

Turner first exhibited ‘Pilate Washing His Hands’ at the Royal Academy in 1830. The painting is based on a scene from St Matthew’s gospel in which Pontius Pilate washes his hands to show that he is not responsible for the death of Jesus, because it is what the people have demanded. In the painting, a crowd looks on at a richly dressed Pilate with his back to the viewer, while Jesus staggers on a cross nearby like a character in a mystery play. But rather than this central scene, Langdown is drawn to an archway in the top left-hand side of the work, where an indistinct figure wearing a hat is tending to another figure lying in bed.

She says: “The Turner is a very frenetic painting. This corner is quite separate from the rest of the picture, which is epic, mythological, and full of activity. This segment contains for me archetypal elements: an arch, a shaft of light, and earth colours. I take these elements as my starting point for painting, amalgamating pigment on soaked paper, using tone and colours to make a space for the imagination to enter and dwell.”

Time is an important element in her work. She explains: “Each time you approach the same subject matter, each morning or afternoon, something different happens, so you don’t just end up with the same painting over and again, something happens that didn’t happen before. I’ve got some paintings where there’s more light coming in. Some where there’s no figure.”

Langdown was brought up in Surrey, and trained as a sculptor at Kingston School of Art. In 1971, she moved to the Welsh slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, where she married the sculptor David Nash and had two sons, Will and Jack. Here she set up a studio where she made carvings, often with a domestic subject matter.

But in her forties, the physical demands of wood carving meant she had to switch to painting. Because she was living in a remote location in North Wales, far away from the big art galleries, she studied the works of Turner, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, who became her teachers.

Explaining how her earlier work has influenced her painting, she says: “I’m a sculptor painting. All the subject matter I’ve chosen have been to do with a place where something’s happening. It needn’t be very clearly defined, but something’s going on. When I was carving, I made a lot of images of windows with curtains blowing. The archway, the curtain, they’ve become emblems.”

‘Colourworks’ is a separate, but related series of paintings, with similar shafts of light illuminating darker spaces. In both series, she uses soaked paper, then mixes watercolour paints, which she later overlays with pastel. Together with her husband, Langdown has a home in Lewes, but still lives and works for much of the year in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Claire has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Kloster Schönthal, Switzerland, Temby Museum and Art Gallery, Mostyn Art Gallery, North Wales, Sunderland Art Centre, Southampton Art Gallery, IKON, Birmingham & Ruthin Craft Centre, North Wales.

Exhibition 26th Nov - 11th Feb 2023