The drawings of Tim Cousins

Vic Kuell / 1924-2015

I should like to dedicate this exhibition to the artist and teacher, Vic Kuell who sadly died last year. He was one of my tutors at Ravensbourne College of Art and he was the first person who suggested to me that drawing could involve any medium. He was always supportive of me and I doubt very much if I would have become an artist without his help. I miss him.

Quest for the Essential – The drawings of Tim Cousins Drawings often provide a very rewarding viewing experience; less formal and more spontaneous than other art works, they often give a more direct and intimate insight into the workings of the artist’s mind. Through drawings one has privileged access to the thoughts, feelings and explorations of the artist’s visual imagination. This exhibition provides us with this kind of access to Tim Cousins’ art of observation and imagination.

5 - 9 Creekside Deptford / SE8 4SA Curator Fritz Duffy Publisher Art Hub CIC, London arthub.org.uk Designer Luke Merryweather ragoworks.com Printer Urban Design & Print urbanprinting.co.uk © Tim Cousins

Cousins’ drawings cover a wide range of media including pencil sketches, charcoal, gouache, watercolour, oil pastels and brush and ink drawings. He likes the challenge and associated possibilities that each medium presents. Some drawings are made in the open air, before the motif, which he seeks to capture through a process of visual osmosis, allowing himself to become absorbed by the shapes and colours before him, which he puts down on paper. Other drawings are free exercises of the imagination, an unconscious outpouring of the day’s residue of form and tone that he has immersed himself in during the day. Cousins does not consciously use drawings as preliminary studies for paintings but regards them as an entirely separate practice. His paintings often go through many intermediate states. The finished painting is the result of the accumulation of visual ideas (mostly hidden in the underpainting) explored over an extended period. In contrast his drawings are exercises in spontaneous execution in one sitting. Thus, whereas the paintings have multiple layers the drawings mostly consist of a single layer. In his drawings Cousins is less concerned with creating a calculated composition than with seizing the moment. He seeks to put down his fleeting impressions and feelings, to make a gesture that captures a spontaneous moment of existence. Rather than trying to ‘find a picture’ in the landscape Cousins waits for the sights presented to him to open up to him in a process akin to Heidegger’s notion (in turn derived from the medieval mystical thinker Meister Eckhart) of Gelassenheit or releasement – a suspension of willing or agency in order to open oneself up to the unfolding of being.

There is a great variety in Cousins’ graphic output, that ranges from careful observations of the motif to abstract gestural marks, which express the way something feels as much as how it looks. Underlying much of Cousins’ work is a quest for refining the marks and the image down to their essence. Often, during a day’s sketching, he will start out depicting the landscape in a way that aims to record all the salient details. But, as he goes on, he will resolve the plethora of impressions into a sequence of marks that capture the essential forms that he has been exploring during the day. These bold marks render the essence of the motif without needing to linger over the details. Looking at the full range of Cousins’ work one becomes aware of how motifs explored in one medium sometimes become the basis of a set of variations in another. For instance, a sketch of decaying wooden groynes on a beach is transformed into a set of three almost abstract forms that provide the motif for a set of variations in oil pastel called Scylla and Charybdis (left). The shapes derived from observation have been transformed, in imagination, into elements of Greek mythology that are also, at the same time, exercises in the colouristic potential of oil pastel. Similarly, his studies of landscapes and cityscapes provide a vocabulary of forms that underlies a series of bold brush and ink drawings. The freedom of working quickly with brush and ink enables Cousins to explore the distinctive dramatic qualities of black brush marks against the white paper. We can enjoy the pleasure of following the motion of the artist’s hand, as the loaded brush gradually runs dry, leaving a more striated mark as it completes the arc of its journey. Cousins has produced a sequence of exciting large scale brush and ink drawings especially for this exhibition. One feels that Cousins never rests contented with what he has done but that each piece propels him onwards to another challenge. Whether it is capturing the ever shifting patterns of waves, the sensual curve of a hillside, the looming presence of rocks or the rickety construction of cranes and towers, Cousins never ceases to engage with the motif with fresh and enquiring eyes, with an always renewed hunger to embrace the multifarious sights and sensations gifted to us by simply being here in the world and taking the time to notice what lies around us. He is not concerned with the conventionally picturesque and often purposely seeks out ‘difficult’ viewpoints, subjects that are not conventionally beautiful or easy to read. But seeing Cousins’ drawings, especially in all their range and variety, as we are privileged to do in this exhibition, enables us to open our eyes wider to the wonders around us.

Scylla and Charybdis, 2009 gouache on paper, 24 x 18 cm

Colin Pink Writer and Art Historian March 2016

Structure VI , 2014 oil pastel on paper, 18 x 26 cm

Architecture, 2014 oil pastel on paper, 18 x 26 cm

St Ives Pier I, 2015 oil pastel on paper, 38 x 26 cm

Channel IV, 2014 gouache on paper, 15 x 10 cm

Malverns, 2015 acrylic ink on paper, 20 x 29 cm

Early Summer VI, 2001 acrylic ink on paper, 20 x 30 cm

Tim Cousins Art in Perpetuity Trust (APT) Harold Works, 6 Creekside, London, SE8 3EW aptstudios.org Curriculum Vitae

1952 | Born in Weston-Super-Mare 1976-77 | Foundation Studies- Exeter College of Art 1977 | One Person Show, Colston Hall Bristol 1977-81 | Ravensbourne College of Art and Design (BA Hons) 1982-83 | Roehampton Institute (PGCE- Art Teaching) 1983 - present | Working as teacher, artist-in-residence, FT & PT 1995 - present | Working at APT, exhibiting at Open Studios from 1996 1996 | Harlech Biennale 1997 | Established Sharing a View Group* 1998 | Two Painters - with Germaine Dolan - Diorama Gallery, London 2000 | Tim Cousins - Contradictions - DeliArt, London 2005 | Creek - River and Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames 2006 | Works on Paper - French House, London 2007 | Bounty, APT Gallery 2011 | London Group - Cello Factory, London 2012 | Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2014 | Switch- Pulchri Gallery, The Hague | A Glance Back (Painting) – Art Hub Gallery, London 2016 | A Glance Back II (Drawing) – Art Hub Gallery, London *subsequently showing at APT (1997), Belgrave Gallery (1998), Whitstable Museum and Art Gallery (1998), Belgrave St Ives (2000), Huddersfield Art Gallery (2001), Derby Museum and Art Gallery (2003), Quarr Gallery Swanage (2004), Burton Art Gallery Bideford (2006), APT (2006), Dimbola Lodge Museum Isle of Wight (2007)

Dolour, 1997 gouache on paper, 15 x 10 cm

Clevedon Summer III, 1997 gouache on paper, 21 x 33 cm