- Venue
- Timothy Taylor Gallery
- Location
- London
Craigie Aitchison died in 2009, and this show is intended as a memorial. The first surprise is that the white entrance at Timothy Taylor has been painted an appropriately intense red. The surprise continues inside, where the normally bright lighting of a white-walled gallery has been dimmed to gloom and spotlights pick out the paintings on the darkened walls. It has something of the feel of a church, the paintings treated as icons or altarpieces. And this is appropriate too, because one of Aitchison’s signature subjects was the crucifixion.
The first, from 1958, is on a panel smaller than a postcard, mounted upon a rough piece of wood. Small rusted nail heads recall the harshness of the cross, though the painting itself is gentle and luminous.
Luminosity of colour is a hallmark of these paintings, often a thin wash over a pale ground, or a thicker layer of bright colour; intense yellow in Shepherd, for example. Blue Handle Vase with Iris has a similarly vibrant orange ground to complement the blues of the vase, with the bright contrast of a green butterfly floating next to the pale iris. And in Sheep and Orange Tree, the tiny oranges sing out against a dark violet sky.
Aitichison’s was an economical style, and this is exemplified in a later Crucifixon II from 1967. The cross is flanked by two spindly orange-brown trees that seem like flames against the black ground. Christ’s features are sketched in with a few thin strokes, and the crown of thorns is made of just four thin pink lines. The whole image is minimal, but altogether enough to suggest the dark sadness of the event.
There are also portraits and landscapes here. The young girl in an extremely minimal portrait has the intense gaze of sitters in early work by Lucian Freud. Landscape with Mountain (Holy Island) is three large areas of colour: Prussian blue, mauve and sienna. The darkness is alleviated by a yellow-green halo behind the right-hand slope of the mountain. Seventeen years later, a very similar mountain stands in the background of the show’s final painting, the Three Kings contemplating the star.
These are paintings worth spending time with, and the whole show is a fitting tribute to this distinctive artist.
