Full Circle
The paintings of Doug Binder - A retrospective exhibition
We are delighted that Doug chose to stage this major exhibition of his work and launch his important book , Full Circle, here where his artistic career began.
“Full Circle runs from Friday 15th January until Wednesday 17th February 2010.
Gallery open from Monday to Friday, 10.30am until 4pm, except for Friday 15th January when the Gallery will be open until 6pm.
You can enjoy highlights of the Full Circle exhibition here
Douglas Binder was the founding curator of the Dean Clough Galleries and is currently Dean Clough’s Painter in Residence.
Born in Bradford, he attended Bradford Regional College of Art from 1957 - 61 and then the Royal College of Art, and achieved international renown at the start of his career with a style (long abandoned) that heavily influenced the graphic art of the 1960’s.
Douglas’s return to Yorkshire in the late 1970’s saw him turn increasingly to representational oils, oscillating between dark, often mythical fantasies and painterly treatment of geometric forms.
More recently he has concentrated exclusively on his first love, painting models ‘from the life’. Of this painting, Douglas says: “Before I had access to a model, I would paint transcriptions from photographic sources. This painting from a wash drawing by Nicholas Poussin was copied from a Roman Sculpture that was, in turn, derived from a Greek original.”
Learn more as Doug reflects on Art School and So On
“In 1958 as a student of seventeen, I rented a studio in the centre of Bradford and became an abstract painter. ‘The new American Painting’ was about to invade our shores and change the face of painting in Bradford. This was abstract painting with a difference, exciting abstraction – not at all what we were used to. We had pitied those students enduring a very long basic design course, recently introduced; a worthy attempt to train students to the niceties of abstract colour relationships. It was the kind of abstraction I could do without.
Where was the heart, the angst, the drama? Just look at the faces of the students. This wasn’t for us, so bring on the action men! Having read about New York lofts, we moved in to a ramshackle room on Thornton Road. Away from the Graphic Design Department, we were free to fight the fight. At weekends we dripped and splashed, I painted some mean De Koonings, whilst others painted in the manner of Motherwell or Rothko.
There would be the three or four of us at any one time, industriously emulating our heroes with a view to shocking those students who toiled with cheerless colour relationships. David Hockney called by to see what we were up to, only to exclaim bemusedly ‘what on earth do you think you are doing?’ We rallied to the thought that Hockney couldn’t possibly understand as he had only recently graduated with a series of small descriptive paintings of local landscapes. What would he know of the heroic struggle?
Our heroic struggle was short lived however, when the reality of submitting paintings to the RCA meant that size was determined by the restrictions of portfolio. My eight by fours seemed rather redundant now.
The romance of abstract painting has never left me. I still believe that next summer I will embark on a series of large, colourful and painterly abstractions that in some way will reflect the feeling of being alive and vital in a warm summer light. Unfortunately, our summers don’t seem to last very long, and besides, I don’t find it easy to leave my nude, who is suggesting all kinds of abstract possibilities.” DB