Small Paintings Large Galleries

Small Galleries Large Paintings I
mixed media
60 x 30 cm
1982
private collection, image courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Small Galleries Large Paintings IV
mixed media
60 x 30 cm
1982
private collection, image courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Adapted from Works and Texts (1992), p. 211/ 212

I've always liked the kind of art book that is crowded with tiny colour reproductions of famous masterpieces, all reduced (whatever their original scale) to the size of a matchbox top. Looking through the Menthuen Dictionary of Modern Painting I come across, say, La Grande Jatte and can now enjoy its sedate grandeur even though it is now only two and a quarter inches high. Entering a room of the National Gallery I can be overwhelmed by the power of a painting whose optical presence I can block out with the tip of my little finger. Scale is a mystery, and size for the artist is a problem; there are many large puny pictures and many small pictures of great pith and moment.

I found myself painting pictures of no more than a few inches square for the four years up to 1982, since work on another project (translating and illustrating Dante) took much painting time away. When I'd finished the paintings, however, they did not continue to remind me of how large a space they had occupied of my working consciousness: they became small pictures. Only after some while did it occur to me that I could make them bigger by making the context in which they were to be viewed smaller. Perhaps in a National Gallery of Lilliput, these would be bold vigorous paintings.