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Inspiration from Artists Week 26 David Dipnell and Walter Langley
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Message
Posted
Welcome to week 26 of the thread , you may see that I have changed the artists this week as Michale has originally suggested Ng Woon Lam. Michael is away on holiday this week and I suggest doing the intro on reflection I thought it better to wait his return. This weeks featured artist are , David Dipnall and Walter Langley.
I will introduce David Dipnall today on Wednesday Jenny will introduce Rober Langley. Sorry if the change is disappointing but I thought it for the best .
David Dipnall was born in Scotland to English parents in 1941, he was later educated at Portsmouth Grammer School . He married and settled in Australia in 1968 returning to the UK in 1974 when he decided to take up art professionally.
He is now regarded as on of the best English country landscape artists.
I hope you enjoy his excellent work I think there may be something for everyone here.
Posted
Pleased you like his work Tessa and Jenny , he is another of my resent finds another one that I would not have know but for researching for the thread. I wasn’t sure if people would like his work or think it a bit chocolate boxy but looking at a lot of it I do think he does a variety all be it still landscapes. I look at his work and have the urge to go back to landscape painting something I did a lot off a few years ago . 
J
J
Posted
Well it is a bit chocolate box, but I like it all the same and can appreciate the skill involved. I walk in countryside most days and usually am thinking of painting views and ideas. I like the mistiness he’s able to achieve above. While I wouldn’t necessarily want to paint like DD (even if I could!) I feel I could certainly learn from his skill in painting trees, water, etc.. his work has a look of being painted maybe 100 years ago.
Another good find!
Posted
The reason why choc boxes of old - do they even exist now? - were adorned by a velvet-effect ribbon and a usually fairly poor reproduction of the wooded-glade type of painting is that those paintings induced a feeling of warmth, familiarity, a touch of the luxurious - and were usually rather good.
Since then, you show an art dealer a landscape painting and the first words to come out of their mouths - which they instantly regret, by the way, when you kick them hard on the shins: I recommend this - is 'hmm - a bit chocolate-box'. So, you go back to this now limping art dealer with some modernist piece of work, all jagged edge and exaggerated colour, and - ensuring their shins are at a safe distance from you - they coo over your new-found originality.
And do you know what? I say bugger them all. Yes, a verdant landscape can be rendered with such perfection that it verges heavily on the twee and obvious, but take such reactions to extremes and you'd sneer at every painting of a tree you encountered. 'Oh, we've moved on from Constable...' (cue for more kicked shins). You haven't moved anywhere: you've followed a fashion: YOU may think this shows your aesthetic sensitivity; I just think you're a collection of clots who can't see any work of art without the £'s appearing in your soulless eyes.
Having said which - technical skill in representing landscape is important, but it's not enough: translate this to portraiture - we've all seen perfectly polished representations of this or that royal duchess which give the impression that they're moulded out of plastic, with no hint of personality other than a dimpling smile; I remember one of which it was said that 'the nose follows you all around the room' - I've forgotten the particular princess thus slavishly depicted. A painting needs, for want of a better word, personality - perfection in paint rarely gives you that. For clarity, I like most of those paintings shown above, though it could be said that one or two are rather countryside-generic - could be of anywhere or nowhere.
All personal remarks in this post are aimed squarely at art dealers and critics, not at anyone on this thread or POL generally!
Posted
I’m happy to stand up and be counted as a fan of these types of landscapes, it’s artists like DD , Peder Mork Monsted that attracted me to landscapes and then onto painting. Having admitted to liking these landscape I do admit to finding some a bit OTT, then why should I like them all because there landscape . It’s the ones with cherub like children and well dressed mothers etc out side a cottage that’s perfect in every way I don’t particularly like , however I do appreciate the skill needed to produce them. Russell I think was who said that Victorian art is gaining popularity once again , not really a bad thing given some of the fine artists that were working at the time. Finally thank god I hear you say I would be a boring art thread and site if we all worked , liked and thought the same way. This discussion comes up,fairly regularly in one way or another . We should have Robert as the Minister for the arts .
Posted
Should also be said: these paintings do need to be actually LOOKED at: I've been doing that to those above, and the more I look the more I find - to dismiss a painting because it's 'too pretty', as I've heard art gallerists do (not, be it said, of one of mine....) is SO infuriating!
PS: Denise - good choice, and I think I agree with you; I'm very taken with the first one shown, as well.
Edited
by Robert Jones, NAPA
Posted
These are idealised landscapes: very English flora - daffodils, oak trees - and rustic details, such as wooden fences and mossy bridges. I like the way you can almost feel the weather, it's different in each of the paintings. Although representational, there is no sign of contemporary country life - no iron gates held together with bits of orange string or muddy tractor tracks or plastic wrapped haybales - rather, these paintings aspire to a timeless pastoral. They are very highly rendered and detailed, a technique you also see in video games or high fantasy art (even if no longer on chocolate boxes).
For me, I prefer landscapes that show painterly marks and process - as we saw with Ann Blockley and Wilf Roberts. In Wilf Roberts, the impasto and black lines give an austerity and solidity to his landscapes; while with Ann Blockley, her technique of drips, textures and spontaneous colour runs, convey the luxurious randomness of nature, but also an erosion. Their landscapes feel more real to me, more grounded. Yes, it is just aesthetic taste; but perhaps it's also more than that, they, to me, convey the fragility of the environment.
I always like the selection of the painters in the forum, the contrasts afford a good way of looking at how each painter approaches the subject.