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David Prentice Painter 1936 - 2014
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Posted
David Prentice, after retiring as Artist in Residence at Nottingham University settled in Malvern to draw and paint on the Malvern Hills. He was a painter who deserves the attention of a wider audience.
The relevance of this post arises from a discussion I had with John Petty on the Digital Painting thread. This post has nothing whatsoever with Digital painting though. John commented, "Pretty much all of what I do now is landscape work. But for me it’s all about being in the landscape and the starting point has to be a sketch or trial study rather than a photograph if the work is really to be convincing." He also expressed an aspiration to develop towards abstraction.
Is suggested looking at David Prentice' paintings - he was a painter who followed a similar course. David Prentice' Gallery made a short video about him sketching on the Malvern Hills and his comments about his studio work. The video is on You Tube - The link should get access to it.
https://youtu.be/wa0huc2QgW4
Posted
I think the route followed by Prentice has been followed by many, including myself. When I started painting some years ago I mainly worked in watercolour from photographs and have progressed, if that is the right word, to painting oils based on plein air sketches and trial pieces, without the success that Prentice had (something to do with ability I think!).Over the past few years I have also moved to a less detailed more 'impressionist' manner.
Perhaps this is a natural progression in painting as I think it is common and well established, follow the changes in JMWT's paintings to see what I mean. Perhaps abstraction is the next (final?) stage?
Posted
JMWT would be, I think, James Mallord William Turner, late of this Parish and leaving a grieving widow, also returned to the arms of the Lord.....
(I get these flights of fancy, redolent of a Victorian clergyman, just ignore them.)
David Prentice was a wonderful painter whom we should somehow have preserved; thanks for reminding me of him, and of course of John Blockley.
Posted
A small point Robert but important to JMWT, he didn't leave a grieving widow as he never married the mother of his two daughters, Sarah Danby. Hannah Danby was his housekeeper and niece of Sarah Danby. Sophia Booth was his guest house landlady in Margate with whom he later co-habited in Putney.
Posted
Or in short, JWMT was a little devil .... he had a long life, by the standards of the day, so it seems to have done him the world of good.
I wonder what the clergyman who buried him, assuming one did, actually had to say on the subject of his marital arrangements: not a lot, probably.
Oh, and trying to copy him, or adopt his style: yes - oh dear me yes, so many examples of painters who tried to do that and came to grief: you have to wonder why people do that, it's never going to work; that's not to say that techniques can't be learned and absorbed, if we know what they were - there's a painter/tutor who has made quite a project (Mike Chaplin?) of analysing Turner's techniques - but I'm a bit nervous of taking too much from other painters' approaches because you do begin to tremble on the cusp of modelling yourself on them and trying to achieve the same effects. I'd much rather achieve my own - however painfully and inadequately.