20 November 2013

the ELEVENTH Hour

...
I can not think of a happier collaborative effort than what I offer today-the evocative photography of Carolyn Quartermaine-artist and textile designer, & Philip Bewley, art consultant and interior designer. I can only make the introduction-and savor their offering-with gratitude.




The Eleventh Hour



“I think always, always of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...and there is All Saints and All Souls at the beginning.
Such a month...
almost pierced by things...more than any other … I used to hate it and now its turned into something extraordinary…”
-Carolyn Quartermaine





 
with thoughts from Philip: 
The month of November is the season for poets –and for painters and photographers. There is an exquisite ineffability, a gentle melancholy and yearning inside this time of year that is the culmination of all that has come before. Jane Austen mused that autumn was “…that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness…that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”






 Jane Austen could have described Quartermaine with her camera in hand, eye attuned to her November surroundings on her London rambles or in the countryside, when she wrote this passage in Persuasion, her final novel: “Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges.”




Interdisciplinary artist and designer Carolyn Quartermaine’s recent album of original photography, The Eleventh Hour . is a visual poem to this season, self-described as “…being the real time and place for novels and films.... where roads lead to leaf -filled tracks and misty mornings.  
The Eleventh Hour could be written by Daphne Du Maurier; it could be a fragrance by Shalimar.” 





As a fine art advisor I look at a lot of contemporary photography and I've discovered fine art photography to be the “It” medium for artistic expression today. Quartermaine has it –that arresting, singular quality in her photographs that turns my head and engages my mind. Arranged in albums, each photograph complements the other in the series, capturing fleeting impressions of sparkling light and shadow, evanescent fragments of observation and memory.














 Looking at Quartermaine’s photographs one experiences the history of photography distilled. In these images I see the legacy of 19th century French photographers such as Gustave le Gray who defied photographic convention by pointing his camera into the light of the sun in the forest of Fontainebleau; I see the haunting elegance of Eugène Atget at Versailles; and the 20th century work of Sarah Moon and the late, great Deborah Turbeville



“There is a resonance there of all the memories” says Quartermaine about one of the settings for The Eleventh Hour. “The road photos were taken at Chelsea Royal Hospital, next to the Chelsea pensioners and this in itself is lovely. 




There is something about that alley-way of plane trees and those stripy shadows and the rhythm of an autumn walk there: the stripes of long shadows that break the way people step…and the steps themselves, with that crunch of leaves and the footfall on the pavement. I went into Royal Hospital, and the graveyard… the green moss was startling on the stones, the leaves huge, the sky piercing blue.... everything swirling…swirling around.”


In another setting for her album, Quartermaine turns her focus inside to the interior of her studio, capturing expressionistic vignettes in dramatic light and shadow that evoke the Baroque paintings of Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi.










Quartermaine adds, “we want to be out of doors and yet…we also want to be inside to catch the morning light through windows, which make everything sparkle in a new way, to see the light through a prism of a chandelier... One wants to walk more this time of year... almost hurry ...and I think there such a profound memory of leaf crunching, of conker bashing, and then getting inside to a place of warmth.”









Artist and textile designer, Carolyn Quartermaine, divides her time between London and the South of France. Conversation Piece, an exhibition she curated for the Costa family, was recently on show at the Musee Fragonard in Grasse. 


Carolyn Quartermaine Here
Philip Bewley Here




 

15 comments:

  1. Fabulous! A perfect confluence of artistry through one lens.

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    1. Libby, thanks-I am thrilled to have Carolyn and Philip combining their talents here-best, pgt

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  2. Fabulous! A perfect confluence of artistry through one lens.

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  3. I too am quite taken with these beautiful and mysterious photographs.

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    1. Parnassus, I am particularly found of the lady sheltering in the large leaf! pgt

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  4. Wow. As I scrolled down, I would think that's my favorite, and another would come up - hit me over the head with conkers. So beautiful.

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    1. Donna, I concur, it is hard not to love them all-and Philip's narrative just enhances them. pgt

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  5. I cannot think of better representations of Autumn in photos and prose. What a delight to stumble upon.

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    1. Gerald, welcome, these 2 talents were perfect to collaborate with, pgt

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  6. A very estimable achievement and utterly LA. I am especially grateful to be discovering it on the 22nd, when I led a posting with TS Eliot inquiring into the 'conduct' of late November. I came here, frankly, to investigate what you might have done for the date, to find this posting anticipating its immanence and temperaments with stalwart restraint - not to suggest that intent. It's simply a quality of keen support on the date; and you will find it alluded to in the Nobel citation for Eliot (1948), addressing his poetical defense of tradition as fundamentally, therapeutic.

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    1. L. this post was serendipitous to the date (most things are around little augury these days) I am woefully remiss in posts and comments. I want to read Eliot over there.xx.

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  7. you choices continually take my breath away; i'm not used to that. always a beautiful stone newly turned, and then another the next day. what a gift you are, gaye, and how lucky are we to be gifted by those on the journey with you. the photos (and the souls behind them) are exquisite.

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    1. VT, bless you-and I mean that, just the pat on the back I'm needing right about now. This post is all due to CQ and PB-two wonderfully creative and generous artists! pgt

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  8. I agree with Philip - I think fine art photography is a fabulous contemporary medium that melds effortlessly with every style. What a wonderful pairing - thank you Gaye!

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    1. Q! agreed three. this pair always will exceed expectations, I think. pgt

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