Denise Strange is an artist working in Worthing; a selection of her work is currently on display in the West End Gallery as part of the Worthing Artists Open Houses 2019.
Her work is delightful and varied, and comes from someone who is clearly inspired by natural beauty. And if we want travel deeper into the experience of art, Denise's work uncovers some of the dispositions which might get in our way.
This image is unmistakably a vase of flowers, of roses.
And yet the artist has painted it in a style which doesn't look precisely the way we imagine things to be. There are no clear edges and every surface is made up of 'splodges' of colour. The leaves, the blooms, the vase, the background - all of them are created with 'patches' of colour. The shadows (which show us shape and texture and depth) are dabs of darker tones. The highlights, reflecting light from a source we can't see, are splashes of white.
It is the kind of painting which can give the deceptive impression that it is easy to create, although only a moment's thought convinces us otherwise. Nevertheless, some people will still insist that this is not how they expect to see a vase of flowers depicted. There are no hard lines. And we can't say with any certainty what the colour of, say, the vase is. Some might point to an illustration in a flower textbook as being 'more realistic'.
But this is a beautiful and skilfully executed painting.
Some reasons why follow later, but first the mistakes which critical viewers might make.
First, because it is such an automatic response, we don't realise that most of the time we 'see as' rather than simply 'see'. We see a flower and we match it to all the other flowers we have seen, and immediately see it as a flower. In our heads, we can make sense of what we see because it conforms to the idea we have built up of what flowers look like; we 'recognise' it. If we didn't do that, the world would be a bewildering kaleidoscope of moving colours and shapes. When we approach a painting, we need to remember the artist has usually presented us with what we would actually see, rather than what we would see it as.
Second, we make a big mistake when we consider that the artist has wanted to show us what something looks like. There are artists who do this, and we call them illustrators; their work is specialised and has a very particular purpose. The great gift of much art is that it re-presents the world to us (not represents). It shows us the world in a new or fresh way. It invites us to share in an experience and to explore it. It engages us, and treats us as part of the adventure.
What Denise has done in this image, is to have invited us into the experience of coming upon a vase of roses. She presents us, without thrusting or insisting, with that sense of being with the roses rather than simply observing them. The colours delight us and, because most of us have some prior experience of roses, they call on our memories of scent and texture and occasion. Perhaps precisely because of the hazy and indistinct style of this painting, it slips easily into a conversation with our recollections.
Denise Strange's work is thoughtful and evocative. I commend it.