Ad Reinhardt the great conceptual minimalist and art writer commented "Art is too serious to be taken seriously".
With this in mind I write the following;
I have been painting for almost 40 years, for nearly three quarters of those years in a professional relationship and married to my wife Judy Buxton with whom I am sharing the Lemon Street Gallery for this exhibition. For all these years, we have avoided sharing an exhibition space at the same time. We have assiduously tried to maintain our own professional independence and as a result, have been able to quietly support each other in the private chaos, caused by some of the more unpalatable aspects of the artists’ life. The interface that lies between us and the ‘art world’ and our public out there and with all the irksome practicalities of everyday life.
So why are we showing together in the same gallery now? … It was accidental, or co-incidental happenstance and took us unawares, in a unique moment of togetherness.
In an ideal world, I have always dreamed, I would pursue a quiet hermit existence, withdrawn from the world and spending uninterrupted time in my studio in contemplation and isolation making paintings. This dream, rather like my dream of uncluttered minimalism in my house and home, is in reality a cut and thrust existence of balance and social interaction, interruption and disturbance. To have such a wonderfully engaging wife, six children and now ten grandchildren, too many animals, and a home that needs constant maintenance, has saved me I believe, from becoming a miserable misery and enriched my life, work and practice!
We are grateful to Louise Jones and Lemon Street Gallery for so enthusiastically hosting us and promoting our work.
In this exhibited body of paintings, I continue to be engaged with a life long play with and around the ideas of a random geometry. Folding, dividing, splitting, and pattern and the repeated evolving motif. These have been recurring themes through out the years of my painting, printing and making. There have been some significant influences along the way, including; Byzantine Icons, Italian Quattrocento painting, South American and African tribal and folk art, Aboriginal art, especially Rover Thomas and the East Kimberly School, classical geometry and architecture, Minimalism Suprematism, and Cubism, Sangaku, JapaneseTemple Geometry, the mathematics of paper-folding, and Islamic decoration are a few that come to mind. Music and movement, language and word, contemplation and silence, have also been significant factors, influencing my painting practice. Painting is a process of playful passive/active problem solving and touches every part of my life and experience; the spiritual, philosophical, social, domestic and aesthetic.
Of course, I am deeply embedded in European cultural influences, and as a teenager, had my eyes and heart open to European Modernism in art, music and literature. Spending my teenage years in the 60’s, the language of non figurative and abstract painting fell easily into my young and fertile consciousness and has been, an all-engaging life pursuit. I am profoundly grateful that I found a voice, to express my aspiration, to become and to be, an artist at an early age. Thomas Merton commented that, “A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.” I began to live Painting and Making as a young teenager and knew then that this was my calling It has held me, obsessive, fascinated and engaged, throughout my life.
Jeremy Annear 2015
Judy Buxton on the paintings of Jeremy Annear, a postscript.
I have been visiting Jeremy’s studio for many years, usually to share coffee with him. As I enter his studio with two cups of coffee it is the quiet, peaceful, and contemplative air that always strikes. I prefer to sit in his studio on the worn old sofa, which our cat Pushkin occupies and has made her own, a safe haven from the dogs and, its a welcome relief after the mess and tackiness of the oil encrusted surfaces of my own studio!
As I look at Jeremy’s work, I am careful not to have too much to say to any paintings in progress, however, I am allowed to respond to some of the them. I am probably just as adept at reading Jeremy’s paintings as my own. I am so fully immersed in his painting language, because our lives are so intertwined, our art is too, and the shapes and forms of his paintings are so familiar. His work is deeply harmonic, like music, but there is also discord, not too perfect, otherwise they would be mere designs. These quiet paintings have presence and gravity. The language is part of him, and his gift of invention is like a deep sea within. His love of music oozes from the studio, even his cooking is like painting, ‘behold another plate of beautiful food’, prepared at the end of a day’s painting, with the same passion.
Jeremy is also very humorous, in his painting, he plays happily like a child, engaged in a constant game of chance with his lines, shapes and forms across the canvas surface, every painting uniquely different. His small paintings remind me of artists like Klee. They are intriguing and playful and it comes to his fingertips in a completely natural way. Each little painting has the presence of a large painting. Having also looked at a great deal of art together over the years, even though we are worlds apart in our own art practice, we find we usually like the same paintings! Our delight in sharing a painting in a museum or exhibition that we have both come across, “have you seen the ….!” As we tend to go off in different directions and re find each other and go over our favourite paintings and talk about them. The memories of these times looking at Art, around the world, form part of the richness of our lives together and our painting union.
Judy Buxton 2015