Painters Online Logo

Login/register

Studio

Only known work by Pat Mann, 1930 - 2019

Welcome to the forum.

Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.

Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.

Hang on Studio Wall
Author
Message
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20438
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7167
Posted
Pat studied with Elizabeth Frink - Pat then being known as Patricia Morris.  At some point, she just stopped working - why, no one asked her for fear of causing pain.  She was my landlady for over 20 years, and once demonstrated against Sir Alfred Munnings, president of the RA, after he'd disparaged Picasso.  "We shall not be moved", she might have cried, had it been a phrase at the time: but - she was, by a kindly policeman who told her to "go home and stop being a silly girl".  I wonder where her work would have taken her, had she persisted with it.

Edited
by Robert Jones, NAPA

With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20438
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7167
Posted
I should have asked her - but she would have wandered away into that place in her brain where she kept her secrets and things she didn't want to talk about.  At the time when she was in art college, there was - still is, really - an ongoing dispute about painting "realism", and moving beyond it; not necessarily into abstraction, but, in Frink's case for example, what I'd call enhanced realism.  I don't think Pat would have wanted to go in that direction; and she might have stopped working because she felt she couldn't.   Some artists of that generation seemed almost to be ashamed of realism, as if it were out of date, old hat, regressive.  It's a pity if this caused some to walk away, perhaps thinking themselves inadequate. I do believe that's probably what Pat felt - she poured her artistic ambitions into her son and daughter, but stopped working seriously herself.  As there are still people who seem to feel that figurative work is somehow all déja vu, and thus imaginatively impoverished compared to either exaggeration or abstraction, I thought I'd show this, because I think they're wrong; and may be shutting down their creative impulses to their longer-term sorrow.  Paint, sculpt, make, write, what you like, as you like - all the rest is just fleeting fashion. 

Alan Bickley

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 9116
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 3447
Posted
Dammit, sent twice!

Edited
by Alan Bickley

Alan Bickley

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 9116
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 3447
Posted
These aren’t the easiest of subjects, in my book anyway! Interesting sketch with some artistic flair evident… I’m assuming Robert, that we’re talking about Sir Alfred Munnings RA, rather than Claude?
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

  • Prestige User
  • Reputation: 20438
  • Last active:
  • Posts: 7167
Posted
We are - I've done this before: why do I keep calling him Claude?  ALFRED, yes, of course; I'll edit the comment, just to save anyone else from looking up Claude Munnings (maybe I knew someone named Claude Munnings; or maybe I'm just senile).