Brancaster Chronicle No. 30: Fred Pollock Paintings
untitled, 2015, acrylic on canvas
16th August 2015, London.
Those present: John Bunker, Anne Smart, Anthony Smart, John Pollard, Alexandra Harley, Nick Moore, Hilde Skilton, Mark Skilton, Noela James, Patrick Jones, Matthew Dennis, Fred Pollock.
Brancaster Chronicles 
I have not met Fred Pollock (yet) but he is refreshingly modest and honest about his paintings. It’s a tired old cliché, but the work does speak for itself. Apart from descriptive analysis (which dominates the content of this discussion), the ‘language’ of this work (which John Bunker rightly eschews too) is non-verbal and highly satisfying for that.
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Just watched this and enjoyed reliving the day surrounded, first by Alex’s fantastic sculptures in the previous Brancaster, and then by Fred’s glorious paintings! There were some sound comments by Anne regarding the point when abstraction can falter in particular conditions where there is a thin background and thicker surface elements, and also the notion that a good painting should give, and keep on giving, something new.
I found Fred’s way of working by not knowing what was going to happen but allowing himself to find passages that worked, and just keeping going until he recognised a successful area seemed to be the true way of dealing with abstraction.
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Re: “… not knowing what was going to happen but allowing himself to find passages that worked, and just keeping going until he recognised a successful area seemed to be the true way of dealing with abstraction.”
What faculty is required for this visual sense of ‘rightness’? Is it universal? Could a change of (viewer’s) mood make something appear un-right? Just asking.
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In Fred’s case I would imagine his experience and knowledge stand him in good stead for knowing when something sits well on the canvas.
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