Gary Wragg, Oval Works Gaze Left, 1997

Contemporary British abstract painter Gary Wragg reflects on his work 'Oval Works Gaze Left', which will be hung in an exciting new redisplay of our main painting galleries, 1-5.

There have been a number of constant threads, themes and concerns in my painting over the past sixty years. I continue to pursue discoveries in my practice, going strong in my newly built studio. Then and now, freedom and spontaneity are priorities in my painting and drawing. The duality of painting and Tai Chi Chuan has run through my career, a life’s passion and way of life. Two as one, each enhancing the other, a friendship of discovery and experimentation.

'Oval Works Gaze Left' 1997, with its elemental colour blue, was one from a group of Tai Chi Chuan related paintings, from what I called, the Oval Works series, after my studio in the 1990s at the Oval, south London. The Oval Works series included also my non-figurative version of Poussin’s Crucifixion. Later that decade I worked on another series relating to Cezanne and Goya. Looking back helps me to go forward with new paintings. This is integral to my painting journey, a circular process rather than linear.

During the 1990s, I made various groups of paintings with fields of broken colour, in closely knit, rough, overlapping layers. Often these fields were made by pressing paint-covered bubble-wrap onto the surface of a painting in progress. I got the idea at the Royal Academy’s 1995 Poussin exhibition, where I noticed an accidental bubble-wrap mark on one of the paintings. Pressing the bubble-wrap on the surface helped fuse a sense of flickering light, colour and freshness with a felt sensation, and pulse in my body and hands, related to Tai Chi practice. While organizing, planning and implementation are indispensable; everything is in the moment, of every moment as paint is applied.

Gazing and looking are a natural everyday duality of visual perception. Central and peripheral vision is essential for visual and spatial awareness. Gaze Left, Look Right, Forward, Backward and Central Equilibrium are all components of the Five Elements, central to the practice of Tai Chi Chuan, and the four cornerstones have been a constant thread in my paintings over six decades. They are, to simplify, Stillness and Movement, Hard and Soft (or Dry and Liquid), Full and Empty and Open and Close.

A painting is something that is absolutely still, but naturally I move as I paint, or when I look at a painting. Then again, I can be standing still but optically can see so much movement in the painting. There are many permutations. The paintings tend to develop slowly to realise the essence of drawing, light, colour, and touch in paint, to resolve and resonate precision, and the unexpected differences as you paint. Order with it’s own explorations and surprises.

I would like to thank the Friends who presented my painting in 2002, and the director and curator then, Duncan Robinson and Dr Jane Munro. And thanks to everyone at the Fitzwilliam for the wonderful, sensitive and beautiful organising and hanging of works throughout the exhibition programme these past decades.

Gary Wragg, 11 February 2024.