Alex Gibbs: Finzi

30 Oct-9 Nov 2024

PV 30 Oct 2024, 6-8pm

Overview

“There are those who believe you should know nothing of the painter when looking at the painting in front of you. The canvas on the wall should be viewed entirely for its own merit. It is my belief that those that go through life with this mentality are merely tip toeing in the shallows of experience.” Alex Gibbs
 
Delving into the life and artistry of the often-overlooked British composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956), Alex Gibbs presents ‘Finzi’, a five year painting project. Comprising a series of plein air paintings created over seven visits to Ashmansworth (the small village where Finzi lived until his death in 1956) the exhibition embroils the life of the composer with Gibbs’ own. For the artist, the process involved in the making of these works was the antidote to his increasing frustration with the compulsive and monotonous behaviour that had begun to plague his studio practice. Rituals that once aided Gibbs in his painting had stiffened into repetitious, impenetrable circuits resulting in canvases that lay unfinished, caught up in the monstrous cycle of “tinkering”, as the artist calls it. “In the effort to rally against my compulsive monster within, I first felt it important to apply some neat, well rounded ground rules to my trips,” notes Gibbs. “Firstly, to remove the possibility of tinkering, I decided that all painting must take place in Ashmansworth and that none could be done once returned to the studio in London.” Depicting scenes once witnessed by Finzi himself such as the front gate of his house, views across the field and St James church, Gibbs’ series also recounts his own experiences of the site, from coffee accompaniments in a churchyard stilled by winter, to the feeling of bare legs in a neighbouring maize field in August.

Artists