Mosaic artist, Kate Anderson (on the Red Route) has just finished a large mosaic piece in collaboration with another Dumfries and Galloway artist, Peter Howell and is to be exhibited at the annual Arts Festival in Saratoga Springs.
"At the beginning of November 2008 work began on the first mosaic collaboration I have been involved with. I had met the equine painter Peter Howell and his wife Jo some years ago. They like me live near Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway. We talked about the possibilities of making a piece together based on one of his racing compositions, but work commitments got in the way for both of us until last year.
With a world-wide reputation for being a top equine painter, Peter Howell has for thirty years exhibited his work annually at the Arts Festival in Saratoga Springs. His style relates to the French Impressionists, in particular Toulouse Lautrec, Monet and Degas, especially in his use of reflected light, and the perfect connection between horses and landscape that it creates.
A lot of discussion went into how we could interpret and adapt elements of his original sketches. Peter was new to mosaics and so the fact that in painting, as he put it, ‘one can push and shove the masses about easily and make tonal changes to suit’ unlike in mosaics, was important. Colour contrasts and co-ordinates cannot be experimented with as you go along! Used to mixing his own pigments he was faced with the challenges in using vitreous glass, but recognised the similarity of cutting individual shapes to represent directional brushstrokes. As he saw it and as many of us might agree, ‘there are mysterious elements at work in placing areas of these different cuts in close proximity to each-other.’
Over 6,500 pieces of vitreous glass were cut. I was anxious to maintain vertical as well as horizontal tension in the piece as, unlike most of my own semi-abstract compositions this one has a strongly horizontal middle ground, with horses and visitors stands set against the striped pavilion. We aimed for good directional structure to give a varying reflective dynamic to the whole. So the small square pieces in the sky halo the background trees and bring the eye in to the centre, while larger organic shapes retain maximum colour in the foreground, and support the horizontal cuts on the horses’ bodies. In the grouting stage the tone of the grout was crucial. Shapes could have easily become fragmented had it been too light, and we needed cohesion in the detailed design.
We finished work in January 2009 and ‘Saratoga’ (measuring 41 by 54 inches framed), was sent to America in February to be shown at this years’ festival after a detour to a gallery in Miami. Saratoga the place may conjure thoughts of a battle in the American Revolution, or names like Diamond Jim Brady of the 1890’s, and John ‘Old Smoke’ Morrissey who brought racing to the town originally, (a politician who was head of a New York gang called the ‘Dead Rabbits’!). By the 1800’s the racetracks and casinos were as popular as the mineral waters. ‘Everything seemed possible in a place where Romance draws dreams in indelible ink’, as Heywood Hale Broun wrote. To me it is encapsulated in the light and shade of Peter’s paintings and the experience of working together on this piece."
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