In the mid 80s you received the George Campbell Award which allowed you to paint in Spain. Could you tell us about that experience?
It was a wonderful experience all round! The award was funded by the Arts Council and The Spanish Cultural Institute in Dublin. I studied the work of the Spanish Masters on attachment to the Prado Museum in Madrid. Mainly I painted in Cuenca and Toledo, later returning to Madrid.
The clarity and brilliance of the light was compelling. The heat was so overpowering, that I fell asleep when painting a watercolour of the Alcazar in Toledo.
In Madrid I visited the chapel of San Antonio de la Florida to see Goya’s great frescos and afterwards I painted an exterior of the chapel. Goya was initially buried in Bordeaux but his body was exhumed and reburied in this chapel in Madrid.
Painting in Spain and visiting many museums and galleries there considerably aided the development of my painting. These awards are so important for young artists. There is an urgent need for a substantial increase in Arts funding in Northern Ireland.
What ideas do you investigate through your work?
Gertrude Stein’s quote about the City of Oakland in California is significant for me. She said, ‘There is no ‘there’ there’. I look for the ‘There’. I am interested in the singularity and uniqueness of place. In particular, places that are transformed through the imagination of colour and drawing, places that are site-specific. I am interested in views that are resistant to making art.
‘Look what’s keeping that has not learnt to give itself away’
Rilke
I work from a series of vantage points and from the variations that occur from a slight shift in vantage point, drawing and painting a landscape at different times of the day and season. I try to work in a spontaneous manner, searching for momentary sensory impressions.
On a cold summer evening I was drawing at Ballyholme beach. The sky had just opened up. I remember struggling with the shifting light, the wind and fast-moving clouds, chasing momentary fluctuations – the fleeting, temporary things. Direct experience of the visible landscape and the poetic aspects of landscape have always interested me.
‘To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields- these are as much as a man can experience.’
Patrick Kavanagh
To see more work by the artist, John Price – see the following link – www.johnpriceartist.com
