[accessibleimage] artist and gallery

Hi,
Two articles, an artist in London and a gallery in Miami.
Regards,
Lisa

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/entertainment/exhibitions/tm_objectid=16262748%26method=full%26siteid=50061%26page=1%26headline=portrait%2dof%2dmerseyside%2d%2d%2dpast%2dand%2dpresent-name_page.html

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12941146.htm


Portrait of Merseyside - past and present Oct 18 2005

A BRILLIANT artist plans to capture the spirit and character of Merseyside in 100 portraits of today's people and an epic canvas of our past.

By David Charters, Daily Post

THE artist himself has a modest manner and his voice is as soft as a cat on a carpet, but within him there swells enough talent to hang the walls of grand galleries with the faces of people who have in some way illuminated his life.

When he is finished, there will be 100 of these faces, all from Merseyside.

And they will be Tony Brown's own hall of fame to be formally unveiled in 2007 when Liverpool celebrates the 800th anniversary of its Royal Charter being granted by King John.

There is an urgency to complete what would be an immense undertaking for any artist. But Tony is blind in the left eye, following complications which arose from a diabetic condition, and there's a cataract on the other one.

Although stable at the moment, it could worsen, adding poignancy to the passionate calling of this gentle man, whose delicacy of touch depends on the observation of minute detail.

Yet Tony is not one to complain, having coming through the depression which cloaked him after he lost half his sight 14 years ago. He never talks in a defeatist way these days. There is an epic task before him and he will finish it and so offer his own gift to the story of Merseyside, its people and its pride.

For his hands can give a kind of immortality to the brave, the talented, the unsung, the kind and the decent, whose smiles would otherwise be glimpsed only fleetingly. Together, his portraits will be known as "100 Heads Thinking As One".

Tony's list will be more personal than those which have resulted from polls conducted for newspapers and radio stations, or the regular gong-giving ceremonies, in which the great and good favour their own, with the occasional token medal diplomatically bestowed on a deserving outsider.

Obviously, familiar names will be included; but, beyond the rich, the powerful and the famous, Tony hopes his portraits will tell us more about the characters who have contributed to the daily life of Merseyside, as Liverpool approaches the 2008 European Capital of Culture.

Tony has chosen some of his subjects, but others are as yet unknown even to him.

This is a work in progress and he is hoping to receive suggestions from readers of the Daily Post to be considered along with his own ideas and those of his family and friends.

And every time he engages people in conversation, Tony learns of more candidates to be filed in his mind.

"Ah, you must have heard of so and so, she did such and such a thing. A fine lady."

There will be 100 living Merseysiders, but these will be supplemented by a massive "Canvas Charter" to be assembled in sections, containing faces from the area's rich past.

That brings us to the contentious question of King John himself, a man who in a later age might well have been branded a "cad and a bounder", if not a "scoundrel".

His real purpose in granting Liverpool its charter was to enable the Crown to use it as a port for dispatching troops to quell rebellions in Ireland, which had come under English control in 1172 during the reign of Henry II.

II. But given the nature of the commemoration, it was impossible to leave him out, though there is no reason why his furtive eyes and weak chin should not be in evidence.

Central to each painting will be the portrait, based wherever possible on a photograph. "I am using a collage style," says the father of four from Birkenhead.

"This will enable me to produce a work which is almost three-dimensional."

In the style he has developed, Tony, a devotee of Pablo Picasso, is able to use newspaper cuttings and images relevant to the person's life as a background to the paintings. These could include a hero or heroine of the subject's or some item of particular interest in his or her life.

Writers might wish to be framed with passages of their best work permeating the portrait. There will be a self-portrait of Brown who is sponsored by Windsor & Newton of Harrow, Middlesex, world-renowned makers of art materials.

"Each one will be a personal diary and a reflection of the person and not simply a reproduction of a flat photograph," says Tony, the son of an insurance salesman, who attended the Blessed Sacrament School, Walton, Liverpool, before his family crossed the river.

Picasso maintained that different textures could enter a composition enabling the reality in the work to compete with the reality in nature in an abstract manner.

However, traditionalists need not fear. Tony's figures will not appear as cubes with their noses and eyes at peculiar angles. But he believes that in the collage form each portrait will carry its own truth and together they will give the viewer an idea of what being a Merseysider means.

One of Tony's subjects is his wife Lorraine, 42, who is not only his "soulmate" but his guide in bringing a dream to fruition.

They have been contacting big galleries and other venues, including the Artists' Club, in Eberle Street, Liverpool, where he has already exhibited his work, and the Athenaeum, Church Alley, Liverpool.

To display all 100 paintings at the same time would require a large area and some venues would have to stage a series of exhibitions to show them all.

The Williamson Art Gallery on Slatey Road, Birkenhead, has already guaranteed Tony space in 2007 for the portraits, some of which will be four feet by six feet.

"This is an ambitious scheme," says Colin Simpson, the gallery's curator, "but as long as the works themselves are well done and recognisable, which from the evidence so far, they are, it will make an interesting exhibition. T

here is a depth in the material. The images tell their own stories and it will make a fascinating record for the year of heritage, showing the range of personalities who have been involved."

But the idea of the portraits being shown at galleries across Merseyside throughout the year also appeals to Tony as a way of drawing the whole region into the celebrations of 2007 and then 2008 when Liverpool will be the European Capital of Culture.

"This is my opportunity to pay tribute to people, not necessarily Liverpudlians, but with an affinity with the city, " says Tony. "It will be a mix of people from all walks of life, but they all intermingle, just as in life. The plumber has conversations with the brain surgeon.

"Accompanying each picture will be a biography, maybe in their own words or maybe drafted by us, detailing their standing in the community, whether a school dinner lady or a university scientist. We're all equal in one respect. We all have something to offer. There is a driving strength and spirit in all

the people I have chosen so far. There has always been a swagger about Merseysiders which was lost a bit in the bad years, but it is back again.

"A crazy man would think twice about doing this, but I am beyond crazy."

Tony's one seeing eye is working well at the moment. Doctors are reluctant to operate on its cataract because of the risks involved to an eye already damaged by diabetes.

"There is a slight build up of cataract in my good eye," says Tony. "But I am not worried about that, but obviously it could become a worry because this is what I do. I am hoping my good eye will hold out. You work today and then tomorrow you do the same.

"Somewhere down the line it catches up, but I can't let that happen. I am totally positive about it. That goes along with my whole philosophy."

AT MUSEUM, BLIND FIND MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

By Nicholas Spangler

There isn't much to see, in an art museum, if you can't see.

That pretty woman with the famously strange smile is a dark blob; the red and pink and green of those water lilies might as well be black and white, for someone who has never seen color in her life.

For this reason Corinne Kendrick, 81 and virtually blind from birth, does not spend much time at the Miami Art Museum. She does not have much time, anyway, what with her piano and accordion, her church, her Braille books, her cooking and the looming Kendrick family reunion.

But there are a few good sculpture pieces scattered outside the museum, which offered a tour Monday for a dozen clients from Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, an agency that works with the visually impaired.

The pieces are strong gigantic things you can touch, which, you'd think, is a good way to take in some art. Except the joints and butting planes of Raymond Duchamp-Villon's Le Cheval Majeur, in the square MAM shares with the library and the historical museum, are too high to reach; and Claes Oldenburg's hulking cement orange peels are incomprehensibly dispersed, down on First Street.

MYSTERIOUS TOUR

Luckily, Carol Brown's very strange Seven More of Them is just next door. ''Mysterious personages,'' said the tour guide, and something else that was drowned out by the overhead hiss of the Metro Mover.

Flick your fingernail against these personages and hear a tight little aluminum ping. Rub these tiny narrow ridges, run your hands over the spikes and sharp edges: these feel a lot more like dangerous weapons, actually, than personages.

''Very mysterious,'' confirmed Michel Flericon, a Lighthouse client.

''The woman who made this -- that woman got issues,'' said Calvin McCray, another Lighthouse client.

''Well, maybe that's what the sculpture's about,'' Kendrick said.

It was a short walk south to Joan Lehman's Rhythm of the Train, eight brushed stainless steel ribs stuck into the ground under the Metrorail tracks.

Kendrick used to come here all the time, in the old days when her husband Earnest was alive, to do her shopping: ``McCrory's, Crescent, the 10-cent stores. We used to go into the arcade. Seventeen years, he's been gone. I still have the stole he bought me. I miss coming down here, sometimes.''

There was the groan of many automobiles, the two-toned sound of the 163rd Street bus about to leave, the voice of a man trying to sell some padlocks, the smell of meat.

A blind woman senses all this more acutely than most. Of course she does: she knew Earnest by the sound of his step in the hall outside.

`OTHER SENSES'

''You depend on your other senses,'' Kendrick said. ``The more you use anything, the more it develops.''

This goes for common sense, too.

For instance, some sighted people have said Rhythm looks like a giant snake. ''Not to me,'' Kendrick said. ``I grew up in the country. I know snakes, and that's no snake.''

text to picture - A FEEL FOR ART: Jean Paul Harragan and other clients of the Lighthouse for the Blind took a walking touching tour of some of the sculptures, including a bronze horse, at the Miami Art Museum.


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