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Chris Miller interview with Hamish Pringle December 2021

 

Hamish Pringle

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Chris, I knew you were an enthusiast for my brother Andrew’s work, but I only recently learned that you’ve known him since 1976/77. You met in Oxford, where you later bought your first painting from him.

 

Since then, you’ve built a significant collection of his work and have a lifelong perspective on its evolution. So, I’m keen to understand how this started, to follow the trail up to the present day, and to hear your view on how Andrew’s work will be seen in future.

 

Chris Miller

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Well, I’ve known Andrew for a long time – since we were both students in Oxford – he at the Ruskin School of Drawing (as it was then called) and I at Merton College. I have two pictures from roughly that period, and one of these is the first painting I ever bought; I’d never even considered buying a painting before. It cost me £40!

 

I would always be stopping in front of it when visiting Andrew’s flat; it fascinated me – it still does. It was the first time I had really seen what he was doing. It features one of Andrew’s still-life-constructions: a book, a fragment of a Primitivist painting, toy soldiers and a tape-cassette box.

1. Andrew Pringle ‘Untitled’, undated. Marked 34a Walton St, which suggests 1978–81. Dimen

Andrew Pringle ‘Untitled’, undated. (Marked 34a Walton St, which suggests 1978–81). Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 40.5cm x 28cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

The colours are grey, khaki and dun but its apparently prosaic subject continues out to the frame with a thorny twig, ragged cloth fragments and lightning-like patterns of tape or wallpaper, so that it combines, as most of Andrew’s paintings do, elements of stability with very dynamic and dramatic marks.

 

HP

How did your perspective on his work change once Andrew had moved to London to take his MA at the Royal Academy Schools?  Were there any influences in particular?

 

CM

Well, I know he had great respect and admiration for at least two of his tutors, the husband-and-wife team of Jane Dowling and the late Peter Greenham.

 

Did they influence his work? I imagine that he took nourishment for his art wherever he found it. But I feel that the artist of this first ‘construction’ already had his own vision and that he simply followed his nose thereafter with increasing mastery, taking in anything that could help him.

 

At the Academy, he certainly moved away from the relatively thick overpainting of his early work, such as the self-portrait in his Ruskin leaving-exhibition.

 

Many things have since fed into his strikingly self-consistent venture. To take a random example, I know that, he was, for a time, influenced by the shapes of the Neolithic villages unearthed at Flag Fen (this was after his move to Suffolk); they influenced some of his initial marks, when he was ‘breaking into’ the blank canvas; these first marks acted almost as obstacles, as further challenges to overcome in the work. He has been very self-consistent through a variety of influences.

 

HP

So, when did you buy your second painting?

 

CM

In 1988, I think, Andrew held a joint exhibition with the painter Bridget Tempest in the enclosed cloister of Christchurch Picture Gallery in Oxford and there I bought my second construction-painting.

 

I had, by now, seen how these were made, in his house in Balham: a shoe-box with a threaded grid contained the assemblage. That grid is pencilled onto the board. But his palette had changed radically. The paint is still dry and matt but much thinner, and the colours are much lighter: grey, ochre, pink and a predominance of pale blue. I think the blue-grey may be owed to Piero’s Rimini fresco, the one with the deerhound.  

2. Andrew Pringle ‘Bones, Rock, Leaves’, 1988. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions 86.2 x 61 cm.

Andrew Pringle ‘Bones, Rock, Leaves’, 1988. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions: 86.2cm x 61cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

We see a central hip-bone, a maple leaf and some toy figures. The extraordinary thing is the sense of looming scale. This collocation of objects might be some huge sculpture in a moorland setting. A high horizon is adumbrated; the vacillation of scale and suggested background give it a kind of constant musical resonance, a clangour of colours and imaginary moorland winds.

 

I should say that I had no intention of forming a collection. I just knew that I really didn’t want to be parted from that painting – and for that matter, another too, which I remember as the skeleton of a horse’s head in similar shades of pale blue and blue-grey. I couldn’t afford both. I’ve never been very rich and though Andrew’s paintings are absurdly inexpensive by the standards of contemporary art, I have never been able to put much money into art. Otherwise, I’d have finished up with many more of them!

 

 

HP

Then Andrew moved to Suffolk and presumably this much greater distance limited contact?  Did you notice the impact of the new environment in Andrew’s work?

 

CM

Yes, I was living abroad for a while and lost touch with Andrew when he moved from London to Wissett. So, when next I saw his work, many years later, it was very different again and I was thrilled by what I saw. I think on that first occasion I bought three paintings, each very different.

 

On subsequent visits, I was able to relate his paintings to various constructions, small temporary ones in the studio and larger ones in the garden. And, yes, the flat Suffolk contours had registered even in the shape of his work, with many more long, narrow, landscape formats. And there was, of course, the presence of the river and the sea. Andrew is a keen cyclist and kayaker. But, as you see below, the thread of continuity remained strong too.

 

The first painting is all in pink, green-ochre and pale blue; the centrepiece of the construction was a white butterfly whose simplified wing-structure looks, in the painting, more like a slightly demonic face. (I remember a little painting of just this centrepiece, like something totemic in a painting by Matta; I coveted it for years and offered for it too late.)

3. Andrew Pringle ‘Composition’, 2008. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions 51 x 33 cm. Collect

Andrew Pringle ‘Composition’, 2008. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions: 51cm x 33cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

Around the ‘face’ are the framing elements of an easel and perhaps of Andrew’s outdoor studio; top right and left are roofscapes that might be summer and winter respectively, as if in simultaneous narrative. The painting has some continuous strokes but is mostly pointilliste; though matt as ever (the support is plasterboard, chosen for its absorbent qualities), it fizzes with the boogie-woogie life of its colours and striking pink uprights.

4. Andrew Pringle ‘The Blyth’, 2008. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions 29 x 23.5 cm. Collection

Andrew Pringle ‘The Blyth’, 2008. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions: 29cm x 23.5cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

The second, ‘The Blyth’, is in notable contrast and comes from Andrew’s fishing-shed-studio in Southwold, overlooking the river. It has a sort of Futurist zizz, like one of Boccioni’s building sites seen by night; rays and lines radiate from the centre, while the river is a shimmering mass of pointilliste reflection amid stanchions and jetty posts. All this in Andrew’s characteristically chalky textures. The picture is at once busily dynamic and still as a stained-glass window.

5. Andrew Pringle 'Lanyon's Quoit', Cornwall 2007. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions 36.6 x 20

Andrew Pringle 'Lanyon's Quoit', Cornwall 2007. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions: 36.6cm x 20cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

The third is ‘Lanyon’s Quoit, Cornwall’. The title refers to a Cornish dolmen, a Neolithic monument with a massive capstone now re-erected on three supports; it may also pay homage to a Cornish painter whom Andrew admires, Peter Lanyon.

 

The capstone appears in the centre, all but transparent, looking like a section drawing of the supersonic Concorde; there is a little black car, obviously a toy; perhaps a postcard of the Cornish coast inspired the background; on the left is a lowered mast under its folds of sail, while upper right, a kind of magic casement gives onto a further dream of coast, with some of those extraordinarily authoritative scribbles that are like a signature in Andrew’s work, seemingly random but exact flourishes.

 

HP

You’ve referred to Andrew’s ‘constructions’ and I’d be interested to hear more about them.  To what extent do you see these as sculptures, or are they just working tools?  If the former, do they have any precedents in art historical terms? And regardless of their status, have you been tempted to acquire one as a companion piece to the painting it inspired?

 

CM

Well, they’re very various. Sometimes, I take it, the ensembles are more or less accidental: ‘found’ still-lifes.  Sometimes they are like sculpture in a ‘painting’ format (faint shades of Cubism and of Frank Stella’s very different idiom). A curator’s nightmare! Try dusting that!

5a. Andrew Pringle maquette 27.09.21 DSCN3465.jpg

Andrew Pringle maquette. Artist’s studio.

At times, he has made big constructions in the garden, at others small-scale constructions in the studio (as in the shoe-box above). Weather plays a part in this. Larger indoor ones sometimes relate to Andrew’s interest in tapestry-weaving.

5b. Andrew Pringle studio shelves 27.09.21 DSCN3394.jpg

Andrew Pringle weaving. Artist’s studio.

You could certainly make a case for displaying the constructions – or photos of them – alongside the pictures they have inspired.  I know at least one of Andrew’s collectors has bought one. But, in a word, I’m more interested in paint. The constructions are part of Andrew’s process, and I’m interested in the final product, in the endlessly surprising dialogue between surface and representation.

 

Andrew calls himself a constructivist artist and I hear this as relating to composition and abstraction; there’s a dynamism akin to Futurism at times but he’s not very interested in the industrial world. Much of his work features craft-structures, especially those associated with water, such as jetties, sails, hulls, kayaks, wharves, hand-rails, mooring posts, boat-stacks, trestles, etc.

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Insofar as artists’ constructions enter art history, they have mainly done so as maquettes or sculptures in their own right; Rodchenko’s spatial constructions or Malevich’s architectons. One could make a parallel with the work of Tatlin or Naum Gabo, but their constructions are essentially sculptural and/or architectural.

 

Andrew doesn’t necessarily even preserve his. They are there to serve his painting. So perhaps a better parallel is Dutch still-life: ephemeral layouts of crystal goblets, peeled fruit, oysters, half-full decanters, burnished silverware, and so on, all glister and transparency. But they are there to celebrate the artist’s virtuosity and illusionism and that’s not Andrew’s thing at all.

 

HP

There would seem to be two main strands in Andrew’s oeuvre – still life and landscape – and two main parameters – abstraction and figuration. To what degree do you see these as discrete or are they overlapping? 

 

CM

They can be discrete. ‘Spexhall Road from Rumburgh’, slightly abstracted as it is, always makes me think of a Corot landscape. It’s a very soothing composition (Andrew marked on the back ‘Bottom left – tiny touch of blue’); as in Corot, everything feels harmonised and in its place.

6. Andrew Pringle ‘Spexhall Road from Rumburgh’, 2009. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions 16

Andrew Pringle ‘Spexhall Road from Rumburgh’, 2009. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions: 16cm x 20cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

Abstraction is a little like Magic Realism: unless one has a strong sense of its purpose, it can seem facile or sentimental; it has to constitute a discipline. Cézanne talks about ‘redoing Poussin from Nature’; Poussin is celebrated for the meticulous composition of his history painting, a genre that allowed him to invent the entire composition (within the confines of narrative tradition and models in classical statuary).

 

This isn’t, in principle, what is done in plein-air Impressionism. But that, too, is composed. So there’s the paradox. The ideal is loyalty to the subject (abstracting or not) harmonised with the very different discipline of composition. Andrew does work ‘from’ ‘originals’ (landscapes or constructions) and the form of abstraction that he practices sometimes reduces those ‘originals’ to indecipherable patterns nevertheless suggestive of figuration.

7. Andrew Pringle ‘Carnation and Rock’, 1983. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions 17.7 x 13.5 cm.

Andrew Pringle ‘Carnation and Rock’, 1983. Oil on hardboard. Dimensions: 17.7cm x 13.5cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

More often, it leaves the components of his subject intelligible but weaves them together in non-naturalistic ways. Then we are mostly talking about a practice of still-life on the cusp of abstraction. But that practice may include landscape, since landscape may be a part of the construction (in the form of a postcard) or it may just seem relevant (‘Lanyon’s Quoit’ – Cornwall, see above). Then we have a combination of still life and simultaneous narrative. (And there is sometimes a form of personal symbolism, as in ‘Cyclist Down’, with its exquisite evocation of Bosch’s ‘Adoration’.)

8. Andrew Pringle 'Cyclist Down' 2008 DSCN3413 125cm x 80cm £750 25.jpg

Andrew Pringle 'Cyclist Down' 2008 125cm x 80cm. Artist’s gallery.

I take ‘Lanyon’s Quoit’ to be a kind of synthetic memory of a trip to Cornwall. But I don’t know this for sure! Andrew and I live a long way apart and can’t stand in front of the paintings discussing them where they hang. And I feel a bit shy about saying: ‘What’s this? Why is it here?’ I mean: I do ask, but it’s partly my business to work it out, I think.

 

HP

I’ve noticed that during the last fifteen years or so, Andrew has employed a technique using layered dots of paint, perhaps in the line of Seurat or Signac. How do you see this evolution?

 

CM

I think it has a lot to do with light – obviously! – and with the presence of water in his work. But it also serves a purpose of control; it’s a very deliberate way of working. In his early Oxford days there were lots of aplats, areas of flat colour. In ‘Bones, Rocks, Leaves’ (1988) – see above – and ‘Untitled’ below there are strong outlines over a very pale background thinly but visibly brushed in. Andrew often seems to be searching to attenuate the impact of oils; he has always avoided glossy, oil-rich strokes in favour of an effect closer to fresco.

9. Andrew Pringle. ‘Untitled’, undated (1976–77). Oil on card. Dimensions 21 x 8.3 cm. Col

Then, for a while, there were these shifting curtains of coloured dots, now perhaps a bit less prevalent (but a technique stored up for its proper use). It allows for very studied effects and can on occasion be quite cold.

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A central place in my wall of Andrew’s paintings is occupied by a hauntingly serene, empty ‘landscape’. I took it at first for another view across a pointilliste river, with Sutherland-like distortion of the fields and farm-buildings on the far bank; top right an exquisite green insect, like a grasshopper, seems to leap away into the depths of the painting, reminding me of the dragonfly (going the other way) in Mehoffer’s ‘Strange Garden’.

Andrew Pringle. ‘Untitled’, undated (1976–77?). Oil on card. Dimensions: 21cm x 8.3cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

10. Andrew Pringle ‘Untitled’, 2009. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions 27 x 42.5 cm. Collect

 

In fact, the design comes from one of the beams of Andrew’s studio, laden with random objects, and the insect was originally a passion-fruit leaf peering in. This is a calm, almost cold, prospect of imposing featurelessness and yet its dots of blue and orange-ochre hold and almost defy the eye.

 

HP

Is it possible for you, connected deeply with Andrew’s work as you are, to step back and locate it within the art world? 

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CM

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Recognition for Andrew has been a long time coming, partly because he has never really sought it. I can’t help feeling that it will come, and he will be acknowledged as one of those English visionaries combining landscape with abstract construction in a lineage of Graham Sutherland, Ivon Hitchens, Ben Nicholson and Peter Lanyon. He is a master of his art.

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I’ve lived with some of his paintings for decades and can’t get enough of seeing them. Sometimes I take them off the wall and am astonished at how strange they are to me and how little I seem to know them. Every mark, however casual-seeming – a thread of turquoise or a flutter of beige-grey strokes – is a joy.

 

So, I’m convinced that more people will come to appreciate his work as it is more widely publicised – not least thanks to your work on this website!

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Andrew Pringle ‘Untitled’, 2009. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions: 27cm x 42.5cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

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11. Andrew Pringle ‘Untitled’, undated.Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions 26 cm x 24cm. Colle

Andrew Pringle ‘Untitled’, undated. Oil on plasterboard. Dimensions: 26cm x 24cm. Collection of Chris Miller.

From ‘Artists at Walberswick: East Anglian Interludes 1880-2000’    by Richard Scott 

 

At the turn of the century at least two painters were using former fishing­ tackle huts in Southwold as riverside studios.  On the north bank of the river, was the studio of Andrew Pringle (b.1955).

 

A dedicated and mildly reclusive artist, Pringle paints with a strong sense of the geometry and muted colour of his riverside surroundings evoking discernible echoes of the work Prunella Clough was producing in and around Lowestoft in the late 1940s.

Andrew Pringle 'Blue Man' 2018 DSCN 3378 31cm x 34cm £250 13.jpg

Andrew Pringle completed his student days in the supportive atmosphere of the Royal Academy Schools, where he resolved that he would never supplement his income by teaching, the traditional route for struggling artists.  Instead he found himself employed in a rich variety of short-term jobs.

 

One of the most interesting was a spell as butler to Sir Yehudi Menuhin, remembered as an unusually generous and sympathetic employer.  A touching example of his thoughtfulness occurred on the day Balthus came to dinner.  Aware that Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) was his new butler's greatest hero among living painters, Menuhin hired a relief butler so that Pringle could attend as a guest.

Andrew Pringle 'Beach Combers' 2017 DSCN3349 39cm x 126cm £450 23.jpg

A major source of encouragement for Pringle during his time at the Royal Academy Schools was the painter Jane Dowling (b.1925), who has made several working visits to the Blyth estuary.

 

Her student career involved study at Oxford University and several art schools including the Slade.  Her late husband Peter Greenham RA (1909-1992) was Keeper of the Royal Academy for some years.

 

Published by Art Dictionaries Ltd.  1 April 2002.  ISBN-10: 09532609

Andrew Pringle 'Stennes' 2009 2019 DSCN3330 24cm x 45cm £300 9.jpg

An appreciation by Jane Dowling

 

When Peter Greenham was Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools he used to say that Andrew Pringle was one of the most interesting students to have passed through in his time.  I thought so too.

 

From his first days at the Ruskin School of Drawing Pringle showed that he had mastered a contemporary idiom and this trend continued to develop in the extraordinarily idiosyncratic still lifes he produced over the next three years in London.

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