One of the most frequent questions we get asked in the gallery is where do you find your artists.  Quite often the second question that follows, is how do you know they are good?

Sonja Weber's work installed at the the Kunsthaus in Nuremberg, for the Nuremberger Art Prize.

When it comes to sourcing them and separating great abstract art out from the rest, we rely on the following criteria.

NUMBER 1
We have to love it!  And when we say love, we mean the kind of love that makes you want to stare at it for hours, and come back to it and live with it for the rest of your life and feel you love it just as much as  when you first caught sight of it.

Frank Hinrichs, Skripturen series, exhibition installation.

NUMBER 2
Visiting art fairs, art prizes, judging, attending degree shows and visiting the studios of emerging  and mid-career artists all means you are getting an idea of the work out there and the work being practised and filtering through mentally what appeals and what doesn't.  Or in the case of the gallery, what fits in with our agenda and identity and what doesn't.

NUMBER 3
If you have worked in the same sector for so many years you are certainly going to develop an expertise in that area.  It works the same in the art world.   Having spent the last 50 years+ combined between the two of us looking at  copious amounts of paintings and sculpture and design, we have an inner radar for what we like and for what is quality.  Our eyes have seen a lot and you learn to filter.  That is principally why people consult your expertise as a gallerist and trust you to place artwork in their homes.

Daniel Mullen's solo show in Sao Paulo.

NUMBER 4
The sealing deal is often an artist's education and C.V.  An artist who has been to an established art school or academy and has subsequently exhibited consistently over the years, is generally someone we feel we can have a good working collaboration with. A lot of our artists have been bought for museum collections or have exhibited in museum exhibitions. There are of course always exceptions, and decisions are never clear cut, but then that is when we weigh up all the criteria and listen to our gut instincts.

An installation view of OSTER+KOEZLE's latest exhibition raum+storung in Jena as part of the official program celebrating 100 years of the Bauhaus.  Some of their pieces will be in our forthcoming show, Legacy of the Bauhaus.

Ultimately it is about developing a long-term relationship with our artists and supporting their careers as their work evolves over the years.  

Our next exhibition Legacy of the Bauhaus opens June 13th 2019.  Damian Brenninkmeyer will be presenting a talk on the contemporary legacy of the Bauhaus in the context of four of the gallery's artists.  This talk will be taking place during the Kensington and Chelsea art weekend at 12 noon on Sunday June 30th.

If you find you have thought of everything in your home design wise but are still sat staring at blank walls, let us give you a few tips on where to start and which walls or spaces are the most important.  So you are able to find a place for some art, so it sits in happy conversation with the surrounding furnishings and so it gives your home-new sight lines, new depth and dynamism, and of course, satisfying colors.

Installation shot - Lydia Mammes

Number 2.  Above the sofa.
This is another prime spot we often get asked for advice and consultation on. In living rooms, people are usually sitting, so artwork should be lower.You want the picture to be part of the whole ensemble. Hanging over a sofa is a way of opening up the room and gives you a central focal point.

Number 3.  Main entrance. 
Many of our clients like to have something in their main hallway or landing.  An artwork that is first glimpsed as the door opens and you walk in. The eye is drawn to it and spaces are linked that way. It is the first sign of being home and it makes a statement. Plus you get closer to the art in these spaces.

Installation shot.  Jane Goodwin.

No. 4 The dinning room. 

Installation shot.  Sonja Weber.

Number 5.  The bedroom.  
Above the bed or above a dressing table is another popular request from our clients.  Often these works are softer in nature or in palette and add a much needed sense of calm and tranquilty to what is supposed to be one of the most relaxing rooms of the house.

Viktor Vasarely,  Méh , 1967,  acrylic on canvas,  179 x 179cm

ROY OSBORNE, Emblem Study 27 (Cube), 2013, signed and dated,  oil on canvas, 61cm x 61cm
£2000

A selection of works by Gwenyth Fugard from our 2018 exhibition Accidental Beauty.

Minimalism or Minimalist art can be seen as extending the abstract  idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing. We usually think of art as representing an aspect of the real world (a landscape or a person for instance), or reflecting an experience such as an emotion or feeling. With Minimalism, no attempt is made to represent an outside reality, the artist wants the viewer to respond only to what is in front of them. The medium (paint for example) and the form of the work is the reality.

Foreground: Triumph, Hand sculpted in clay, black terra-sigillata and platinum lustre,        £900
Celebration, Hand sculpted in clay. Finish red terra-sigillata and platinum lustre interior,     £800

The gallery is awash with floating fields of colour on the occasion of Lydia Mammes's second solo show, Iridescence, which opened last week.

Installation shot of Iridescence at the Lisa Norris Gallery.

Generally when a painter chooses to focus solely on colour, be it layering, its structure or its relationships, we look historically to colour field painting.  Colour Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism. Below is an example by one of the movements most famous painters, Mark Rothko.

In a similar vein to Mark Rothko and other painters of the 1950s and 60s, Lydia uses  mid to large scale MDF panels which are  covered in flat expanses of colour, minimizing any surface detail. She uses many thin washes to help give her paintings a lightness and brightness, as if they glow from within.

When stood in front of them in the gallery, you can feel visually surrounded by the colors. The perfect antidote to the dark hues generally found in the depths of Winter!  Iridescencecontinues through to March 9th.  

LYDIA MAMMES, Untitled (Oil Slick), 2018, signed and dated, 2018, acrylic on MDF, 150 x 150cm       £5600