'Wise words and new artworks' - a personal view of lockdown by HSoA Patron Alan Gouk

Ealing and Montrose-based painter Alan Gouk is prolific in his art, insightful in his writing and hugely supportive in offering guidance and teaching to Hampstead School of Art students. Here the HSoA Artist-Patron shares a personal account of his time in lockdown and turning palettes into a series of new artworks.

A personal view of lockdown by Alan Gouk

Lockdown has affected artists in different ways. Some are manically producing as if there was no tomorrow. Others, fearing the eclipse of their public persona, see it as yet another opportunity for self-publicity, using their media connections to further a populist agenda.

Surely it is time to lay back, take stock of the things that really matter in life, outside of egotistic ambitions, and reflect on why it is that art matters, and what it is at its core, the qualities that make it endure, when it is good.

The effect on me has been to postpone embarking on large-scale works, with the financial investment they would entail, to work at a leisurely pace, and to turn the palettes, which would have been used to mix colours for larger paintings, into a series of improvisations on rhythmic movement, concentrated pressure of colour shapes, and formal clarity. These new artworks will be grouped in two or three series — The Minerals Series alludes to the fact that the mineral origins of most pigments are, so far, the most advanced.

'The Mineral Series' by Alan Gouk.

Artworks range in size from 14” x 20” to 16” x 22” and 12x16” approx.

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