Four Vermilions by Patrick Heron
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漏The Estate of Patrick Heron. All rights reserved, DACS 2021.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s Patrick Heron, like others of his British contemporaries, felt the influence of the American Colour Field and Abstract Expressionist painting. By about 1965, however, he began to express reservations, particularly, it seems, about the 鈥榟ard-edge鈥� colourists whose work he described as 鈥渃linically impersonal, literally dead flat in quality鈥�. Heron began a large series of what he called his 鈥榳obbly hard-edge鈥� paintings, lasting roughly from 1964 to 1976. In these the boundaries between areas of colour were quickly and freely delineated and the oil paint painstakingly applied using small Chinese watercolour brushes to create a uniformly smooth surface. His aim was to compose 鈥渁symmetrical, unequal, disparate, formal ingredients into a state of architectonic harmony鈥�. The two large paintings in the 糖心TV collection are from this period.
Four Vermilions:
The harmony of this painting is achieved through the use of different tones of a single colour and reveals the way they are optically modified according to their position when superimposed upon or adjacent to a different tone. It is interesting to consider whether this painting is constructed as a flat space, or whether the shapes create shallow sections which protrude or recede.