SAP

Watercolours by John Ellison

Watercolour is a most troublesome medium. In fact if you have previously used
some of the opaque media oils, acrylics, or gouache it can be damned hard. It
does not like to be laid on with a trowel. It has its own rules, its own laws, its own
inclinations; it will not be bullied or carelessly knocked about. You need [I
discovered after months of frustrated effort] to set up a certain rapport with the
medium; then, and only then, it was capable of glorious effects.
I knew of course from looking at the work of Emil Nolde, Edward Hopper and Jon
Singer Seargent not to speak of Turner and many others, that watercolour was
capable of depicting the world in ways that were virtually impossible in other
media. There is something about watercolour itself that seems to partake of the
nature of clouds, waves, fogs and mists, and the brilliant shine of light on
coloured surfaces. Used correctly it flows and sparkles with wonderful
immediacy, bringing life to the most common place subjects.
How did the watercolour itself want to be used? What aspects of the world did it
want to depict? If the paper happened to be damp then the edge of an object
became mysteriously blurred. I found myself thinking about lost and found
edges in a way I had not thought about before. I had noticed how Morandi, in his
paintings of bottles, pots, and jars, sometimes clearly emphasised one side of
the object crisp and clear- while the other side became almost non-existent, a
vaporous substance that almost blended into the background. The object
appeared to be emerging out of nothing, or to be emerging and disappearing at
the same time. This was rather uncanny, but seemed to correspond to the weird,
moment to moment, fluctuations of existence itself.
Cezanne used watercolour beautifully and in quite an unorthodox way. Some of
his edges on an apple or a pear were reinforced over and over, setting up a kind
of visual rhythm, while other edges disappeared altogether. Looking at one of his
apples could take you on a visual adventure. Within a single object there were
changes of edge, changes of colour, changes of tone, and changes of colour
intensity. A visual experience in a single apple! I thought to myself that the same
principle could apply to depicting a bottle, or any other object for that matter.
And then of course there was his use of the white of the paper; the untouched
white serves to unify, illuminate and at times almost shock you with the sense of
actual light.
These are some of the aspects of watercolour that have beguiled me over the
past months in bringing this exhibition together. Ultimately an artists work is a
form of self portraiture whether he or she is depicting an apple, an alligator or
the Grand Canyon. A painting is a visual encapsulation of an artists way of being

in the world; and if some of my surprise, delight and wonder in this current
existence comes across then I am well satisfied.