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Typical of Eve Quarmby's painting is the subtly modulated still-life where, carefully selected, commonplace objects, whilst depicted as subjects for quietly dynamic formal arrangements, nevertheless acquire significance that seems to belie their ordinariness.
Fundamental, formative sources of her work obviously comprise Cezanne, Bonnard, Matisse and Morandi, while clearly influential artists would include, Ros Cuthbert, Rose Hilton, June Miles, Ann Redpath, Mary Fedden, Winifred Nicholson and William Scott.
Amongst early, other significant influences on her life more generally, must surely have been the experience along with her sister and parents, of the second air raid of the War, over London. She was then seventeen and the bomb destroyed the family's home.
Training at Westminster Hospital as a SRN appeared as a necessary option after this disaster and this was followed by becoming Matron of Russell Road Day Nursery in Wimbledon. In this context, having already a qualification and consequently without state financial support, it was difficult to study as an artist, but she did attend classes at the Central School of Art and St. Martins, with encouragement from her father, George, an established painter, R.A., colleague of Henry Moore and HMI.
She subsequently secured what she describes as 'a fabulous job' in Adprint, Tottenham Court Road, with F.H.K. Henrion, the graphic designer and teacher, in his Art Department in a large publishing house. With Henrion, she worked on a magazine called Future, the English version of the American Fortune. This was followed by a move to Henrion's studio in Hampstead where, with two other colleagues, they worked on the 1951 Exhibition, producing images now iconically associated with that event. Henrion died in 1990.
Since moving to Bristol in the late '50s, her development as an artist has been augmented by various teachers, including June Miles, Ros Cuthbert and Peter Cotes. She taught as well, in the state and private sectors - primary and secondary levels, including in adult evening classes.
I respond strongly to the way objects relate to each other and particularly to the chance juxtapositions that occur as we move and place objects in the course of ordinary living. In certain contexts, related objects appear to take on a poetic significance, often enhanced by the colours and textures involved and by the play of light over surfaces.
My aim is to distil the essence of such visual experiences, using a minimum of means to arrive at an image which has more than just representational significance.
This statement by the artist provides an insight into important features of her work. Characteristically there is the relationship with Pittura Metafisica, through Morandi's 'quiet meditation and lyricism' (Haftman, p. 178, 1965), entailing the strange eloquence of mere things - the inanimate objects that so frequently inhabit her paintings, the shadows, occasionally back-lit and reminiscent of De Chirico. Many of these objects also form a particular iconography. For example, they invariably entail a fusion of personal associations and aesthetic quality - that of 'significant form', as promoted by Clive Bell, the champion of formalism of the Bloomsbury Group, evoking 'aesthetic emotions'. Further significance is taken on by the portraits and life studies, although considered in ways similar to 'things', they are, nevertheless of course, animate. Specific examples, very different in style, are the prints - graphic in form, significantly influenced by Henrion. For instance, the girl on the swing is of her daughter, in her grandparents' garden, outside her grandfather's studio, in Blewbury, Berkshire, and is evocative of Fragonard's The Swing, though the connotation here is clearly different.
Her sense of three-dimensional form derives from her work in ceramics and was supplemented by George Rainer's teaching at the Royal West of England Academy. This both contrasts with, yet augments her later work in painting. The frequent use of autonomous picture space, involving tensions and ambiguities between flat surfaces and implied depth, owes much to Cezanne although this is treated post-impressionistically, in the manner of Bonnard. Whilst she has often spoken of her preference for working in closely related, oil-based, tonal washes, she nevertheless does make quite dramatic and telling use of near, if not full complementaries. Here there are hints of Fauvist tendencies and Matisse, particularly in some of her life painting and landscapes. The washes, like the drawings in her sketchbooks together with the typographical work with Henrion, as well as theatre set design, contribute to and underlie the obvious sense of form in the paintings.
The new, very recent translation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex might encourage a feminist interpretation of at least aspects of her work but could mislead. However, bearing in mind the restricted opportunities for artistic flourishing as a woman, due to presupposed roles; initially during and immediately after the war - specifically as a nurse, then a wife, with familial responsibilities - later as the mother of two children; her achievements are more than merely noteworthy. This is so not because of these factors but rather in spite of them. She intuitively recognised the significance of the various potent influences described above, absorbed them and has made them fluently her own, on the basis of obvious talent, creative flair and persistence; '...it is easy to imagine how much strength it takes for a woman artist simply to dare to carry on regardless...'.
Eve Quarmby has had solo and joint exhibitions around her home city of Bristol in various galleries and private venues and has sold work in the U.S.A. She has continued to enjoy painting and drawing into her 80s.
Colin Brookes 01.2010
References
Bell, C. (1961). Art. Dublin: Grey Arrow.
de Beauvoir, S. (Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila-Malovancy-Chevallier)(2009). The Second Sex. London: Jonathan Cape.
Haftman, W. (1965). Painting in the Twentieth Century. London: Lund Humphries. |
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