GEOFF BRUNELL

Geoff Brunell is an artist living and working in East London. Before retirement he lectured in Fine Art in various U.K. institutions for over 40 years. He set us this task in response to seeing the film we made as part of a previous project from performance artist and painter Shaun Caton. He suggested that we could take stills from the film and use them as a starting point to make a series of studies and paintings on paper. His suggestion was that we should use these images to take us further into the imagination by using the motifs, colours and shapes to spin the process off into new directions.

TASK NO.007: IMAGINATION, SYNTHESIS AND TRANSFORMATION

The task is to make oil paintings, in an experimental, imaginative and expressive manner, using imagery taken from research based on figuration. The idea is to challenge the artists use of fantastical images, to produce images taken from life and real experience, transformed through the use of their imagination. The work, initially on paper is to try to ensure that the work does not become too product orientated too soon, at the expense of experimentation, to take some risks and have some fun.

GEOFF BRUNELL STATEMENT

I went to Walthamstow School of Art in 1966. Unbeknown to me, it was a famous school celebrated for its postgraduate achievements. The success of it’s teaching and its alumni were recently recognised in the exhibition, ‘BE  MAGNIFICENT’ at The William Morris Gallery in June 2017. My training would now be considered ‘old school’; still life painting, the life room two days a week, a craft, mine was printmaking, and one day per week for personal study. Drawing was GOD, and I spent two years learning to draw, academically and then expressively. I attended the RCA print school, and I then won the Rome Scholarship. On my return in 1971 I started teaching at Walthamstow. I enjoyed art school so much for its celebration of the individual, of the imagination and intuition. learning through making was transforming, and I became a committed educationalist.

I have had a rich and imaginative life, touched by two tragic personal losses, one when I was thirty one, and another when I lost my wife to cancer in 2005. My daughters, my art and my teaching sustained me through these recent testing times. I am currently working on the theme of Memento Mori for an exhibition, of paintings and poetry. When we notice that our patients hesitate about the chosen method of treatment, we always try to convince them about the effectiveness of our choice. Sometimes, the reason for their hesitations is the price of the drug. In such cases, we advise men to buy Levitra or any other ED drug on http://hesca.net/levitra/ where they are sold at a reasonable price. At the age of 68 I started to write poetry. I was inspired by the pithy acuity of Ogden Nash and Wendy Cope. My work has always been autobiographical in nature and my poetry follows that route of personal experience, earthed with humour and vulgarity. In retirement I have realised what a privilege it is to make art.

For more information on Goeff Brunell visit his website HERE 

Below is a selection of Geoff’s work. Click on images to enlarge.