Sunday, September 25, 2022

Caroline Coon at the Stephen Friedman Gallery

What a nice surprise to hear from Caroline, with an invitation to her private view in Mayfair on Thursday evening! I love Caroline's paintings, all the more so because when I first met her to interview her for The Lost Women of Rock Music probably in about 2005, she showed me the way that she paints: an under-layer of black, grey and white as a kind of skeleton for the colour and animation that covers that layer and brings the painting to life.

Caroline is honest and forthright, and so are her paintings. This series is a paean to west London, where she has lived for a long time, hymning the people as much as the landscape; what I used to call the 'peoplescape', that living carpet of activity that plain architecture and functionality can't capture. There's lots of humour here: the half-person marching out of the painting, and the crowds of naked men having been peeled of their business suits, presented in their birthday suits instead, without the power-play of their office uniforms. 

The way she paints water and shadows: that I found positively inspiring, to reduce realism to design, yet for the water and shadows still to look real. I'm still puzzling over that days later.

Of course openings need party people, and the loyalty of London punks knows no bounds. There was Gina, herself thrilled to have acquired agents and a forthcoming exhibition of her work in London, and Paul Simonon who has an exhibition of his work around the corner. Not being of London punk heritage, I frequently fail to recognise people, but they are usually magnanimous about it. Caroline looked beautiful as always, having recently, according to Gina, been modelling Pam Hogg's clothes at her fashion show.

Here's the exhibition, and some photographs that don't do the paintings justice. Perhaps you need to go!

Details here: https://www.stephenfriedman.com/exhibitions/166-caroline-coon-love-of-place-private-view-thursday-22-september-68pm/









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