At the last talk I gave at Hampstead School of Art I remember being asked if I ever painted on board, and I said no, because I didn’t like the streaky brushwork ( thinking of other practitioners who favoured board.) But then I saw some paintings by Alan Davie, which had none of those flaws. And with lockdown I came across some white coated mdf, the kind used for kitchen cabinets, and gave it a whirl.
I was surprised to find how direct my attack became, “utter directness” in Heron’s mantra, how the resistance of the board enabled an immediacy and finality of each stroke, and how scraping out with palette knives brought one back to that resistance , allowing an element of direct incisive drawing that is harder to sustain on the more yielding canvas. And there need not be any streaking effects if one varied the consistency of paints with turpentine.
It took me back to some of the innocence of the earliest paintings I ever did, when I painted on hardboard offcuts, and I explored these early connections in a variety of styles, converting what had been palettes for larger paintings into palette knifed encrustations, or else thinning them down in free association and accepting the results. Free of grandiose or “serious” ambitions, these little pictures attest to my own mantra — make a statement, trust what you do, and do it more.
Alan Gouk Biography.
1939. Born in Belfast
From 1944 Brought up in Glasgow.
1957-59 Studied architecture at Glasgow School of Art
1959-60 and at Regent St Polytechnic, London
1959-60 worked for LCC Housing architects Dept.
1961 Began to paint in oils.
1961-64 Studied Psychology and philosophy at Edinburgh University.
1964-67 Exhibitions officer with British Council Fine Arts Dept.
1966 Exhibition Officer to British entry Venice Biennale.
1967 Teaching in Sculpture Dept. St. Martin’s School of Art.
1070-90 Head of Advanced Sculpture Course St. Martin’s.
1967 Prizewinner John Moores’ Exhibition
1972 Hayward Gallery with Gillian Ayres and John Golding.
1972 -79 with family, moves to Stroud, Glos.
1975-79 Annual Group exhibitions at Stockwell Depot.
Writes extensively for Artscribe Magazine on painting and sculpture, including two essays on Patrick Heron’s work of the 1950s.
1982 Woodlands Gallery Blackheath with Geoff Rigden
1987 Tate Gallery acquires Cretan Premonition 1956-57.
1990 retires from St. Martin’s And moves to Montrose, Angus, Scotland.
1995- 97- 2001. Solo shows at Flowers East, London.
1996 Nominated for Lord Provost of Glasgow Painting prize.
2002 again prizewinner John Moores’ Exhibition.
2007 and 2013. Solo shows Poussin Gallery, London.
2013- 15- 19 Solo shows at Hampstead School of Art and at Felix and Spear Gallery, London.