June Collier
Presence in figurative art is an underappreciated quality.
It takes a certain skill to conjure the feeling that you’re not
so much looking at a painting as simply viewing the real
person through a veil daubed with pigment. Stand and
stare at a Rembrandt portrait or one of Lucian Freud’s later
works, for example, and one can’t escape the sensation
that the subject is lurking somewhere behind the canvas,
obscured from view by a few choice brushstrokes.
The same could be said for June Collier’s work. Hers is a
brand of figurative painting steeped in raw human emotion,
so much so that if you stood close to one of her canvases,
you’d swear you could hear them breathe. Portrait of Phil
IV is one of at least nine finished oil paintings of a favourite
life model. “Apart from him being an excellent, reliable and
very interesting model with a face often expressing some
pain and unhappiness – my cup of tea – Phil didn’t have a
need to chat much,” she reveals. “This was very important
because I have had long-term problems with my limited
energy and models wanting to chat would wear me out.”
The same model featured in June’s Hospital paintings, a
collection made in response to her treatment for a second
bout of cancer. They were also, she says, the first time in
her career that she had a strong sense of how to finish a
painting. “I tend to want things to feel real and right and
resolved. However, in recent times I have felt that my
working progress images are more successful than the
resolved ones and I am letting this guide my current work.”
Progress photos of Portrait of Phil IV, seen on her
website, reveal the full range of her mark making, from
broad wet passages that reference a childhood painting of
the sea, to the delicious impasto lines of complementary
colours. “Frequently towards the end of the day’s work I
use very broad, loose, wet brush marks over the painting
and then lay it immediately on its back, so it doesn’t drip.”
This push and pull between likeness and expression is,
she says, a legacy of her training at the Slade in the 1960s,
when a successful year focused on objective observation
with Patrick George was followed by two years “a bit too
influenced by the seriousness” of tutor Frank Auerbach.
Ill health has sadly restricted June’s time in her studio of
late, yet her unswerving desire to communicate and reflect
life in all its beautiful, awkward glories remains undimmed.
http://www.junecollier.co.ukFresh
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Artists & Illustrators 15