Meeting Mr Lowry, Part 1

I first met Mr Lowry in about 1986 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London....by meeting I mean I first saw one of his pictures there!

During my first ever trip to Manchester last month, I stayed in Salford Quays and had the great pleasure of meeting him once again - this time in all his grandeur in The Lowry Centre - a purpose built gallery and arts centre.  It was a memorable visit and one that I shall never forget.  I particularly loved his more haunting images - those of 'Bargoed' his largest canvas (63" x 50"), 'Blitzed Site' (1942), 'Seascape' (1952) and 'Father and Two Sons' (1950). 

 As an avid reader of books, I could not resist the urge to devour Shelley Rohde´s book on Lowry which gets to the very heart of the man, unravelling some (but not all!!) of his eccentric and mysterious character.

Of his now famous industrial scenes, he once said '...my ambition was not to become an artist.  My ambition was to put the industrial scene on the map because nobody had done it...And I thought it a great shame.  But I did not expect to keep on working at it all my life as I have done."

For nearly 30 years - from 1910 to 1939 he painted on without recognition or understanding.  "I´m not an artist," he once said "I`m just a man who paints"

Have you ever met the real Mr Lowry?

Drawing: The Bigger Message

"...When you are drawing, you are always one or two marks ahead.  You're always thinking, 'after what I'm doing here I'll go there, and there.'  It's like chess or something.  In drawing I've always thought economy of means was a great quality - not always in painting, but always in drawing.  It's breathtaking in Rembrandt, Picasso and Van Gogh.  To achieve that is hard work, but stimulating: finding how to reduce everything you're looking at to just lines - lines that contain volume in between them..."
"...I thought one of the saddest things ever was the abandonment of drawing in art schools...When it was given up I kept arguing with people.  They said we don't need it anymore.  But I said that giving up drawing is leaving everything to photography, which isn't going to be that interesting.  At one meeting I went to, they said, 'Oh, I see it's back to the life room, is it Hockney?' I said, 'No, forward to the life room!'
David Hockney in conversations with Martin Gayford


Extracts from one of the most fascinating art books I have read in a long while: "A Bigger Message Conversations with David Hockney" by Martin Gayford.  A must for Hockney fans like me and those trying to look far beyond their normal range of vision, far beyond their current boundaries.