Art of England - April 2009
Trish Wylie skilfully fuses film and art to reproduce iconic cinematic images.
Trish Wylie's introduction to the world of cowboys and indians came at an early age. Given a full cowboy outfit and an Indian feather headdress, her imagination was let loose no doubt encouraged by her older brothers. Today, her boot cut jeans, checked shirt and cowboy boots, Wylie and the 'Western' painter is in her element. Her monumental size canvases of the screen icons from films such as Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly are eagerly sought by collectors and grace homes all over the world. A favourite choice for home cinema rooms and City offices alike, Wylie's painting arrest the viewer, transporting them to a more innocent time, a time of families sitting together watching Cheyenne, Bonanza and Wagon Train with eager anticipation of the latest Western blockbusters on the big screen. These are undoubtedly highly original pieces.
Her road to recognition as a painter was not easy. Although she displayed a precocious talent by winning a prize for art at the age of ten, as for most girls at school in the 60s and early 70s, art was not considered to be a viable career option. At her convent school Wylie rebelled and left at sixteen. It was not until after a few years of drifting in the world of work that she was interviewed by an advertising company where she was given some isometric tests which showed her to be both bright and artistic.
"I was told that if I didn't deal with that now, I would have a life full of frustration. So I went to evening school and gained an Art A level and an Art History O level, and then a place at Camberwell School of Art in September 1979. Camberwell was a traditional college with teaching based on looking and handling materials. I loved my foundation year and gained a place on the degree course for fine art painting."
Wylie began her career as a painter in 1984 while a young mother. A second daughter was born, after which she and her family moved to Dorset for a better quality of life than Brixton could offer. Following the breakdown of her marriage, a shared custody arrangement meant that she had some time alone to devote to her career as a painter. "For the first time in my adult life I felt free. It was at this time that I really began to develop as an artist, winning two prestigious art prizes."
Influenced by Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Goya, and the Japanese artist Hoshido Kenji, her work developed from semi-figurative to non-figurative with a passionate love of an artist's materials. Her work on the theme of Westerns was inspired by her noticing in a TV guide that the Magnificent Seven was going to be shown. Although she did not have a television, Trish was determined to paint the images which had so inspired her as a child.
Sir Christopher Frayling, a fan of Wylie's work, who will be at her opening party at Belgravia Gallery wrote, "In the mid 1960s an unknown Italian film director named Sergio Leone was given $2000,000 and some left over film stock and set out to make a Western. With a script based on a Samurai epic, an American TV actor named Clint Eastwood, a music composer named Ennio Morricone, Leone was expected to make what was essentially a throwaway film. What he ended up making was A Fistful of Dollars, the first in a trilogy of films that came to define the 'Spaghetti Western'."
Wylie explores the process of image making by watching the films many times, extracting an image and interpreting it in paint. It replays the cinematic experience for the viewer on a giant canvas and is as though the essence of a moment on film has been captured in paint.
"I became fascinated by how many film makers had been so influenced by painters and knew that connection I was making was strong. The Charles Bronson painting is taken from Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Sergio Leone wanted to make his interior look like a Vermeer and his close-ups like a Rembrandt. John Ford, when making She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, wanted to make the film look like a Frederic Remington painting. I am taking the moving image and making it still with the mark making and sensuality of paint. The paintings take on a cinematic presence because of the size and the adherence to cinema screen ratios. I continue to work in the way, furthering my investigations into film and paint".
Her usual formula is to paint her canvases in the exact screen ratio of the film which inspired the work, but she makes it her own with muted colours, blurred edges and her trademark drips which draw the viewer into the painting until they can fully comprehend the still image and probably recognise the film from which it originated. The menace of the ghostly dark outline of seven horse riders galloping toward you from a distance is very memorable: Steve Mc Queen, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood as the The Man with No Name are screen giants who epitomise heroism in the iconography of the Western. Trish Wylie captures them in characteristic poses in her compelling and vibrant canvases, which also convey the genre's almost epic sense of landscape.
The twenty canvases and watercolours on show at Belgravia Gallery until Easter have a vividness which captures the aura of the action-packed movies which Wylie loves. Already capturing the attention of galleries and collectors around the world, they are truly individualistic. Robin Baker, Curator of the BFI Media Teque, has remarked, "These paintings melt into the films."
They are indeed a fusion of art and film.
Trish Wylie's exhibition runs 9 March - 9 April 2009 at Belgravia Gallery, Albemarle Street
London, WIS 4JL
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7629 1247.
www.belgraviagallery.com
