Journal

Allow me to share some travel plans. In October I’m setting off to walk from Milan to Munich, across the Alps. The premise for this 350-mile mountain trek lies in the paintings of the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 

  Pieter Bruegel The Elder. The Return of the Herd (Autumn). 1565. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. ©KHM-Museumsverband

Daniel Coffeen has a PhD in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley where he was a lecturer for many years, in addition to teaching graduate seminars in critical theory at the San Francisco Art Institute. He's a frequent contributor to philosophy podcasts and a prolific blogger.  

Dead Reckoning is the process of calculating your direction by using a previously determined position. It is thought that Dutch sailors threw dead bodies overboard to calculate their future route. This seemed apt for a solo show in my 50th year in 2020. It’s not about looking back, it’s about looking forward. Some hope amid the cynicism. I’m trying to make the viewer look longer and harder, to have a one on one relationship with landscape painting; to make them curious and find some joy. The places depicted in my work are partly an invention, full of contrasts and spontaneity. They combine memories of places I have lived or longingly imagined, an idea of a place and the melancholy of longing and wanting to belong. An unfashionable romanticism grounded in the act of painting.

Gordon Dalton 2020

“I take a remote, original point of creation, where I presume formulas for human, animal, plant, rock and for the elements, for all circling forces at the same time.

Art is like creation, and applies on the first and last day." 

                                                                                  Paul Klee, Diary, 1916

Christy Burdock's paintings and drawings manage to merge the specific with the general. 

ALASTAIR GORDON SPOKE TO CHARLEY PETERS IN JUNE 2020 IN THE WEEK PRECEDING THE OPENING OF WITHOUT BORDERS AT ALEPH CONTEMPORARY.

THE ART FIVE is a contemporary art blog created by Hannah Payne.

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Hannah Payne is an art world professional with 20 years background in the art and heritage sector including working with artists, institutions and leading art programmes and exhibitions. In this edition of The Art Five Hannah talks to Gordon Dalton about his recent exhibition ‘Birdhouse Blues' at Aleph Contemporary and its virtual touring to Atelier de Melusine.

Dan Coombs on the influence of Matisse.