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London Calling: Nigel Casseldine, Rosemary Carruthers and Paul Robinson
Green Pebble Autumn 2008 issue

With London responsible for a significant proportion of the world’s multi-billion pound art market, Britain’s capital city is now truly a Mecca for aspiring artists. But as those artists mature, many move away to continue their work elsewhere. Ruby Ormerod reports on three East Anglian artists who have successfully forged, and maintained, ties with galleries in the city.

Follow the crowds through Britain’s capital and the attraction to aspiring artists of the city becomes immediately apparent. In some streets dazzling galleries outnumber almost all other retail outlets. The footfall along West End’s Cork Street alone guarantees more interest from prospective art buyers than can be dreamed of elsewhere in the country, and add to that the possibility of being hand-picked by a savvy gallery manager or benign collector, and London becomes truly irresistible.

Even today, despite uncertain economic conditions, the mood of the capital’s art scene remains reasonably buoyant. Fine art auctions at Bonhams, Christie’s and Sotherby’s were still fetching record prices when Green Pebble went to press. In May 2008, Lucian Freud’s 1995 nude, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, sold for an unprecedented US$33.6 million (with fees); a month later his Girl in Attic Doorway, sold at Art Basel for US$12 million.

‘The art market doesn’t necessarily follow the money markets or the investment market,’ Christie’s Europe President, Jussi Pylkkanen, told the Financial Times in an interview with Peter Aspden in late May. ‘Frequently, when there are forms of downturn in certain economies, the art market is a place where some investors seek to [invest].’

It is conceivable, experts say, that collectors feel genuinely confident about the quality and value of British art on offer nowadays; hence the willingness to continue investing.

Given such endorsement, London must be the jewel in any British artist’s crown, especially as the pressure on existing artists to find viable markets continues to grow.

Nigel Casseldine

A fulltime painter, Essex-born Nigel Casseldine is one of thousands of artists who depend significantly on the London market for their livelihood. Although Nigel and his wife, Jenny Partridge, have opened their own gallery in Tunstall, between Woodbridge and Aldeburgh in Suffolk, he openly admits they ‘couldn’t survive’ without London. ‘Here, in East Anglia,’ he says, ‘people drift in and out, especially in the summer. London has a greater core of people all year round.’

In order to tap into both markets, Nigel produces one style of painting for his gallery and another for his London shows. The former includes ever-popular local oil scenes of the Suffolk coast; the latter are his far more quirky and exciting ‘Pixey Green’ paintings in which he explores heart-felt impressions of vernacular Suffolk; the Suffolk of past and present, unashamedly interpreted and reduced to a handful of tonal colours, bee hives, hay stacks and the occasional ‘working man’.

In London, he exhibits these primarily through the Medici Gallery, a contemporary figurative art gallery on Cork Street where his paintings fetch between £800 and £5000. He has had ten one-man shows there since joining them in the late 1980s (he exhibits every other year) and hangs up to 40 paintings per exhibition.

Medici Gallery’s Jenny Kerr remembers starting with the gallery nearly twenty years ago and being ‘rather under-impressed’ by the work being exhibited at the time. ‘Until I saw Nigel’s work,’ she says. ‘Suddenly, here we had life, colour, academic skills, all acting together to produce wonderful paintings.’

Of all the artists exhibiting at Medici at the time, Nigel is the only one still exhibiting with the gallery.

‘He has been able to move his work in a steady, progressive manner, taking his collectors with him and constantly adding new buyers,’ Jenny Kerr explains. ‘Never falling into a rut of repetitive images or losing the essential essence of a Casseldine painting. After all these years, he is still able to show the viewer a fresh interpretation of an interior, still life or landscape.’

He was, she adds, the first painter whose work she bought, and she is still collecting his work two decades later.

A Royal West of England Academician member since 1991, Nigel’s journey to Cork Street was far from conventional. His introduction to art began at the age of 18 working in a London business which sold equipment to the printing trade. The company held classes in the use of its offset lithograph machines and Nigel, as an assistant, was encouraged to practise drawing on the plates.

This practice proved so valuable that from 1967 to 1972 he joined artist Francis V Magrath as a studio assistant; an opportunity he describes as ‘the biggest stroke of luck I’ve ever had’. Through him Nigel not only refined his drawing skills but met Royal Academy members who actively encouraged him. He enrolled in part-time classes at Camberwell College of Arts and, later, at the Sir John Cass School of Art, Media & Design.

However, by 1973 he was ready for a change. This took the unusual and über-romantic shape of a converted ambulance. Travellers in the traditional sense, Nigel and Jenny left London to roam the English countryside for the next decade, enjoying their freedom to such an extent that they named their Tunstall gallery ‘Romany Studio’ in memory of the experience.

Their plan was simple and wholesome. In the summer they travelled, parked and painted local scenes which they sold for £5 a picture. In the winter they rented a cottage, sometimes in Norfolk or Suffolk, and painted.
They befriended local artists and art suppliers; some remain friends to this day. Jenny, a wildlife illustrator, was discovered by a publisher whilst the ambulance was quite literally parked in a lay-by and through him she signed her first contract to illustrate a series of children’s book. Many more contracts followed. Nigel tells of how she used to receive letters quaintly addressed to ‘Jenny Partridge, Under the Oak Tree, Lower Slaughter’, where they used to park.

With the arrival of children and responsibilities came the time to retire the ambulance. Ten years after hitting the road to create ‘art for everyone’, Nigel had fortunately also built up a track record with numerous galleries and his work had come to the attention of the Royal West of England Academy. He became an Academician Member in 1982 and six years later won the RWA’s Brandler Painting Prize.

Nigel believes Medici first approached him at the Bath Art Fair. Not that he can remember all the details; it was such a long time ago.

‘In order to show in London, you have to concentrate on quality, on your draughtsmanship, on the way you put it together,’ he says when asked what aspiring artists must do if they are to succeed in the Capital. ‘You have to think of everything, that’s important. The London market doesn’t want just one good picture, your work has to be consistent and have quality.’

Happily settled in what was once a post office, Nigel has used the family’s move to Tunstall to develop his Pixey Green series. Although named after a tiny hamlet near Stradbroke in Suffolk, the paintings bear no resemblance to their namesake. They are Nigel’s interpretation of everything he loves and feels about Suffolk.

What makes the Pixey Green paintings especially lively are the haystacks and beehives which give the pictures rhythm. Old fashioned and whimsical, they are positioned where other artists might place a figure or tree. To point. To provide direction.

‘I love the shape of the beehives,’ he says. ‘And I don’t want to paint plastic-wrapped haystacks, where’s the romance in that? If you’re not painting what turns you on, the paintings aren’t going to be turned on.’
His paintings are deliberately small, sometimes only 9 inch by 9 inch, to ensure his work is accessible.

‘There are a certain number of people who are able to go to London and pay [large amounts] but most can’t. I wouldn’t want to lose that contact with the ordinary man. There’s nothing more complimentary than having someone with an ordinary job who loves what you do and can buy it. That’s as thrilling as having a millionaire buy something.’

Fortunately, he’s had one or two of those come knocking as well. The Marqis of Bath at Longleat and the playwright Tom Stoppard are known to have bought a Nigel Casseldine or two for their private collections.

Rosemary Carruthers

In Norfolk’s market town of Fakenham, painter and art tutor Rosemary Carruthers credits her entry into the London market to sheer good luck. On the only occasion when she approached a gallery with a painting in hand – a very small painting, she hastens to add - the New Grafton Gallery in Barnes accepted her.

Later, thanks to personal recommendations, she was accepted into another two galleries. One of them – Llewellyn Alexander (Fine Art) opposite The Old Vic Theatre – represents her to this day.

Rosemary is modest. She insists times were different ‘back then’ and if she were to do the same today she wouldn’t necessarily succeed. ‘Back then I was doing something unusual,’ she explains. ‘Today, there are lots of people painting in similar ways.’

Thirty-five years after Rosemary introduced herself to the art market, the country has indeed witnessed an explosion in art courses and graduates. There are thousands of budding artists for every gallery. But equally, talent has a way of shining through and the number of buyers attracted to a transformed London market where talent is nurtured, has grown as well. By the end of 2007 London was experiencing soaring prices for contemporary and modern art, with buyers coming not just from a more informed and sophisticated local pool of investors, but from overseas as well.
Originally from Canterbury where she grew up inspired by an artistic father and musical mother, Rosemary studied at Canterbury and Bideford Colleges of Art in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s she moved to Norfolk where she was able to paint professionally and start teaching ‘O’ Level and recreational art.

She paints in a figurative style which has been described as ‘English Impressionist’. Working variously in oils, acrylics and gouache, her paintings are inevitably of a gentler, quieter side of life, even when capturing the city.

‘She has a lovely, easy style,’ confirms Llewellyn Alexander Fine Art manager Nicholas Dawton. ‘Her subjects are interesting and intimate. She has a way of putting the subject off to one side, or above or below, so that the main area looks empty. Yet it’s not. Her paintings are so natural and have a very peaceful feel to them. They have a calming effect.’

He is also enamoured with her choice of colours, which he describes as soft and positive. ‘Her colours are important but they aren’t strident; there’s never any glaring or grating. She often works in situ and paints en plein air and that is wonderful. It makes a tremendous difference.’

Her paintings – of which there are 20 to 30 new pieces a year - sell for between £700 and £2200 and often feature Southwold, Dunwich and Walberswick on the Suffolk Coast; these settings sell consistently well for her in London. When given the opportunity she also paints London scenes, enjoying the strong uprights and verticals of the Capital’s architecture.
But this year Rosemary has taken a break from the London market to concentrate on her portrait painting skills and experiment with abstraction. She is also taking time out to focus on her other great passions – gardening and music.

She has had work accepted by the Royal Academy and has shown with the New England Art Club.

Her paintings of gardens provide her with a calm she relishes. ‘I’m looking for peace and harmony in my life and am trying to capture that in my paintings,’ she repeats. ‘I don’t want to make statements, there’s enough of that going on elsewhere.’

Paul Robinson

It’s 1985. Imagine coming home to find the Tottenham Riots on your front door step. A local resident has died of heart failure after being raided by the police and this has sparked a horrific and bloody clash between police and youths. For the next six months you spot police vans parked in little side streets near your North London home. Protecting you and your neighbours? Watching?

The Tottenham Riots were just one of numerous iconic scenes that played out around Paul Robinson during his early years as an artist. He speaks of watching handbag thieves dashing through the streets being chased by cars; of football hooliganism outside the Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club. All visible from the council flat he managed to rent as he worked by night in a homeless shelter so that he could paint by day.

Not that buyers of his art will easily find imagery from these moments in his work. Their impact appears to run far deeper than his oil paintings can currently reach. One has to look at his work as an illustrator to see the darker, more thoughtful side to this artist. And at the paintings he currently paints largely for himself.

Originally from Cumbria, Paul Robinson now lives in Cromer on the North Norfolk Coast with his partner and family. A graduate from Carlisle College of Art, he launched his career by moving to the Capital and working as a freelance illustrator for publications such as the Radio Times and the Sunday Times. His style was both comical and dark, with sinister gangster-style characters dominating his pen and ink social commentaries.

Constantly chasing the next freelance commission is gruelling work but the contacts he made introduced him to his first gallery – Soho’s Thumb Gallery. Now known as the Jill George Gallery, the Thumb specialized in illustrations and it wasn’t long before Paul’s drawings were being exhibited alongside those of his fellow illustrators.

By now Paul was already learning another truth about the London art market. It paid to be patient, friendly and astute. By the time he had made the decision to pursue his painting on a fulltime basis – his Tottenham days, in other words – he had already learned to observe the market, to see who was exhibiting, and where. After watching and visiting a gallery for up to a year, he would have an informed idea of whether his work would fit into the gallery’s portfolio and only then would he approach the gallery with a view to introducing his work.

Interestingly, the subject matter of those early paintings wasn’t riots, crime or the homeless he supervised in the night shelter where he worked, but the colourful scenes of ordinary life in Tottenham: waitresses serving breakfasts; the greengrocer’s; the halal butcher’s.

‘I just seemed too tired to do [scenes from the homeless shelter],’ he explains. ‘You’d think it would influence your work because you’d meet such interesting people, but because of the nature of the work, I think I just wanted to escape it, really. There were some incredible people, and some frightening people too. It’s difficult work. I had to build up a certain shield.’
In the mid 1990s Paul started exhibiting regularly with Highgate Fine Art in North London. Owners Noel Oddy and Laurie MacLaren have watched with interest Paul’s development over the decades, noting in particular the way his relocation to East Anglia clearly agreed with him and shone through in the way he adapted to the rural landscapes.

Noel recalls a ‘remarkable show’ in 2005 entitled 'Discovering Norfolk'.
‘This confirmed his happiness with his new surroundings and, at the same time, with his enlarging family,’ Noel says. ‘Altogether, we know that he will continue to develop his 'discoveries', as he is very good at this kind of thing.’

By 2002 Paul had also added the Artisan Gallery to his long-term list. This successful commercial gallery has branches in the City of London, Kingston, Canary Wharf, The Royal Exchange, Bishop’s Stortford and other locations along the commuter belt.

Paul produces a steady stream of oil paintings for these galleries, where his paintings sell for £800 to £2500. For the longest time his trademark was images of City workers caught in some tiny, fascinating, moment.
‘With the homeless people, I was too close to them,’ he explains. ‘I needed the distance. But with the people in the City, because they were there walking around in their suits and all looking the same, my imagination could project onto them what, or who, they might be. Plus, with the backdrop of all the fantastic buildings, it really got me going.’

Paul’s passion for his subject matter, together with the injection of a quirky, dark sense of humour, resulted in some of his most intriguing works. In one painting, Lost in the City, the City traders resemble Mafia characters. In another painting, Thief, the viewer is left wondering just who is the culprit amongst half a dozen possibles. There is certainly the undercurrent of suspicion and darkness one would expect of an artist who started his career surrounded by violence, alcoholics and the mentally ill, and this adds a welcome edginess.

More recently his paintings of London landmarks – without his trademark figures in them – have been his bestsellers, a development he is not entirely pleased with. ‘I feel uncomfortable doing such a touristy thing,’ he confesses, although it becomes apparent as he talks about these latest paintings that the buildings have had an impact on him.

‘I’ve tried to resist the iconic buildings of London, but once you get underneath the skin [of the monument or building], you see what a fantastic building it is. When you live in London you wouldn’t dream of painting these buildings, but suddenly, with the distance of living in Norfolk, it’s taken on a different slant.’

Paul uses a great deal of paint in order to capture the texture of these scenes. For a long time he applied his paints with torn off corners of art paper, using different sizes of paper to give different results. ‘Texture is very important to build, and then you have to push the paint around and start to make it work the way you want it to.’

More recently, he has reverted to working with palette knives and brushes. ‘Every time I make something too familiar, I have to kick against it,’ he says. ‘I have to take it to another level.’

His view of London has changed since leaving it, he says. ‘When I lived there, I wanted to show the underbelly of the city and the city workers. I could almost see them like mobsters. Now it’s not quite the same. Now I see people in suits as people in suits.’

He smiles. ‘Maybe I’ve mellowed a bit.’

Let’s hope not.

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