Patrick Heron
One of Heron's objections to abstract expressionism and its descendants was its tendency towards symmetry. In a symmetrical composition, some parts of the image are more important than others. By creating images that were asymmetrical, Heron was able to produce paintings and prints that had no structural hierarchy and obliged the eye to wander constantly. Every bit of the artwork was essential to the rest.
Heron would sketch out a composition for the wobbly hard-edged paintings and prints very quickly - often in less than a minute - before spending a considerable amount of time filling in the colour. In this way, they combined the instinctive performance of American action painting with the calculated, contemplative approach of Heron's European idols.
The prints that Heron made at this time are still incredibly fresh and exciting today, and should not be thought of as mere transcriptions of his paintings. The canvases were made by filling in large areas of pure colour with tiny Japanese watercolour brushes. This gave each work a distinctive texture, with ridges of paint that would catch the light and animate the surface. In contrast, silkscreen printmaking renders the surface of the artwork completely flat, allowing Heron to reduce questions of colour down to their most basic and immediate essence. It also allowed him to explore different colour combinations within the same composition, something that would not have been possible when making a painting.
Silkscreen printmaking was closely associated with Pop art and commercial advertising, but Heron's prints subvert this glossy, pristine aesthetic. Instead of calling to mind the dazzling, angular cityscape of New York they celebrate the rugged forms that surrounded Heron in Cornwall. His prints of the early 1970s are a bridge between two artistic outlooks, celebrating both while forging something completely new.
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