Tuesday 24 November 2015

Hope-full, sunny optimism over the long-term, is the best possible and correct attitude to life: the implicit message of William Arkle's painitings

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/what-is-being-communicated-in-william.html

3 comments:

David Stanley said...

The Father and Mother is on the sleeve of "In the region of the Summer Stars" by The Enid. Still quite listenable if you like a bit of prog. He certainly had a varied style of painting and an epic quality that reminds me of John Martin.

Bruce Charlton said...

@DS - I personally find Arkle's paintings extremely different from those of John Martin. Arkle's work is something I appreciate mainly as a part of his spiritual philosophy; and it has a seemingly childlike goodness about it - which needs to be understood in the context of his philosophy.

John Nartin is a very impressive painter in detachment - especially when you see the large canvases in real life. As you doubtless know, we have several at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle; and the gallery hosted a major exhibition of his work a few years ago which was a knock-out!

But Martin's work focuses mainly on apocalyptic disasters and the consequences (punishments) of evil - so, aside from both being spiritual men, I get a different 'flavour' from each: pastoral versus epic.

Leo said...

It well may be that I saw too plain, and it may be I was blind;
But I'll keep my face to the dawning light,
though the devil may stand behind!
Though the devil may stand behind my back, I'll not see his shadow fall,
But read the signs in the morning stars of a good world after all.

--Henry Lawson, excerpt from his poem After All