Works by Ann Arnold

Works by Graham Arnold

Notes by the Artists

Graham Arnold

The mind has the ability to translate one sense into another. Think only of the music of Vaughan Williams and Elgar. Are not the paintings of Giorgione or Gainsborough musical?

My paintings are motivated by particular feelings that I have for certain landscape, or people I know well, or certain poets, writers and composers. I love things which contain the past in ghost form and many paintings use this as a starting point. My work for this exhibition (in various media) has been inspired by Finzi, Gurney, Butterworth, Elgar and Bax, sometimes their music but at others an incident in their lives or a landscape which they loved.

Ann Arnold

I am moved by sudden glimpses of 'Paradise' or when for longer periods my vision of the world, and by that I mean those things that I actually apprehend with my senses, deepen and intensify producing a feeling of intense joy. Thomas Traherne expresses this feeling with immense clarity and Finzi's music, of course in 'Dies Natalis' increases the e~otion yet again, so that one is 'almost mad with ecstasy'.

Graham Arnold

Just as gentle breathing sustains life, so the breeze 'the lovely, lively air' as Traherne writes, pervades landscape. Finzi's music expresses this quality as no other composer quite does. Butterworth and Gurney explore similar feelings but Finzi sounds so natural open and unaffectedly original. The essence of Finzi is to be found in his many songs, they contain music of profound lyricism and they seem to give form to the feelings I have for the true countryside.

Ann Arnold

I have based some of my paintings on Hardy's poem 'Proud Songsters' which is the poem Finzi used for one of his songs -'Earth, and Air, and Rain'. I was introduced to Hardy by a dear friend and teacher at Art School at seventeen years of age. It was the novels at this time that engaged me. The narrative unfolds in a particular countryside, so that the landscape subliminally emphasised the story. It was later that I read the poems of Hardy. Graham and I spent our honeymoon in Cornwall and he shared the poems with me. Being there, I was very aware of the links with Hardy and his remembered early life with his wife. We even lost a cup in a small stream's waterfall like the incident related in the poem 'The Waterfall'. Hardy evokes the feeling that 'now' is merely the latest manifestation, the tip of the branch, other twigs will grow to replace them. So one's awareness of time and place and eternity; of now and here, are caught and held. All these things I would like in my paintings. There is little topographical reference to Hardy's places because their particularity is replaced by my own.