{"id":31,"date":"2013-11-12T09:58:41","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T09:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/?page_id=31"},"modified":"2014-12-19T09:59:41","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T09:59:41","slug":"1961-70","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/?page_id=31","title":{"rendered":"The Art Room"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bernard<\/a>

Drawing of a Henry Moore, Tate Gallery, 1963.<\/p><\/div>\n

Art as a subject\u00a0was mostly absent\u00a0throughout\u00a0my formal\u00a0schooling,\u00a0but happily my\u00a0informal\u00a0self-education in art picked up in 1959,\u00a0when I started at a\u00a0new school.\u00a0\u00a0This had\u00a0a large Art Room at the top a newly built\u00a0block\u00a0of\u00a0classrooms and Science labs. The new\u00a0Art Room had inherited a set\u00a0of old\u00a0art books\u00a0which boys could enjoy, as the room\u00a0was left unlocked in our free time. We could also experiment with art materials\u00a0left out for us by the art master, John Davie ARCA, whom we witnessed\u00a0shifting style\u00a0from lyrical figurative painter to\u00a0American-influenced abstract expressionist. I was also\u00a0lucky that, through the kindness of my Uncle George\u00a0Lee and\u00a0my mother’s friend, Monique Khalgui, I\u00a0was able\u00a0 to stay in London from December 1961, enabling me to visit\u00a0the Tate Gallery in the\u00a0school holidays.\u00a0My\u00a0surviving drawings\u00a0display varied\u00a0responses to Rodin, Henry Moore\u00a0and Francis Bacon.<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/a>

Dr Douglas Fraser (1962) Pencil on cartridge paper xx x xx ins (xx x xx cms)<\/p><\/div>\n

Although\u00a0I had left my Prep School in North Wales, I continued to enjoy both\u00a0help and\u00a0encouragement\u00a0from the kindly\u00a0parents of a fellow pupil friend, Andrew Fraser. Dr Douglas Fraser\u00a0gave me an illustrated life of\u00a0van Gogh,\u00a0from whom I\u00a0learned the expressive and symbolic potential of\u00a0trees as a motif. Mrs Margaret Fraser made me a wonderful canvas portfolio, with a piece of hardboard and clips to steady a sheet of paper, a stout zip and a shoulder strap.\u00a0At the time,\u00a0I wore this portfolio\u00a0like a badge wherever I went.<\/p>\n

My mother also contributed to this informal art education. Though absent, she\u00a0sent me some books which stimulated my interest in Art Theory: a US College freshman textbook on art appreciation, called ‘Learning to Look’, a Dictionary of Modern Painters, and the Metropolitan Museum set of ten art\u00a0Portfolios.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Bernard<\/a>

Portrait of Jean Galadi (1963). Ink drawing.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The themes which\u00a0emerged in my art\u00a0from all these influences included portraits, trees, human figures, Abstraction, Dadaism and Surrealism.<\/p>\n

In 1963, the art master John Davie\u00a0sent me to the Slade for an interview with the admissions tutor. I was advised that I could try to apply to the Slade\u00a0in a year’s time, though I was advised to take an academic\u00a0degree first.\u00a0I had saved the allowance provided for me by the mission, enabling me to buy a return\u00a0ticket to\u00a0Niger, West Africa, where my mother had continued as a missionary,\u00a0after my father’s death in 1960. It was my aim to stay with her and\u00a0prepare\u00a0the portfolio for my Slade application, which, in\u00a0the end,\u00a0I never attempted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Art as a subject\u00a0was mostly absent\u00a0throughout\u00a0my formal\u00a0schooling,\u00a0but happily my\u00a0informal\u00a0self-education in art picked up in 1959,\u00a0when I started at a\u00a0new school.\u00a0\u00a0This had\u00a0a large Art Room at the top a newly built\u00a0block\u00a0of\u00a0classrooms and Science labs. The new\u00a0Art Room had inherited a set\u00a0of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":927,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31\/revisions\/975"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}