The Easel

9th April 2019

Sean Scully’s Figurative Leap

Scully’s childhood encompassed poverty and homelessness. Becoming a father has impacted him greatly, happily, and in unexpected ways.  In Scully’s art, figurative paintings featuring his son are suddenly emerging alongside his renowned abstractions. “Staying with what is safe is not attractive. [I]f you take enormous risks it can go wrong. But if you don’t it will go wrong anyway”.

2nd April 2019

Leon Kossoff: A London Life

Kossoff’s subject is London – roads, buildings, tube stations, individuals. His early cityscapes are “bare and joyless but [they] have authority”. That was true of postwar London. His more recent work is lighter; a school building is “a mighty structure that seems to stand for something more lasting”. Says one critic “an oeuvre that is among the most original in postwar painting”.