HOW MUCH DOES SIZE MATTER ?

russelldorey • 19 October 2020
( PEAR oil on canvas 8″ x 10″ cat 653 )

In response to a recent post on my Facebook Group (‘Russell Dorey’s Studio’) about my imminent exhibition (at THE CROWN, All Saints Street, Hastings Old Town, East Sussex, TN34 3BN. From 17th NOvember to the 31st December 2020) my friend Gill commented that she loved the little painting of a single pear. She’s right; it’s a small but a perfect painting.

I’m going to use the Pear to make a postcard and I’ve been thinking about how to price that painting.

( JUG AND LYBIAN CORAL BEADS oil on canvas 16″ x 14″ cat 670 )

My gallery in London closed down a few years ago taking my career with it).  I had an on-going… disagreement with the gallery director over the pricing of paintings. She insisted that the price of a painting should be in proportion to its size; that if I ask more for a little painting that for a larger painting then people will think that there’s something wrong with the larger painting.

I can see her point but I disagree. Of course size is going to have an influence on the price on a painting but I would like to present the case for small and simple over big and bold; size does not necessarily matter, it’s what you do with it that matters.

( BOTTLE AND GLASS oil on canvas 21″ x16″ cat 619 )

Looking at canvas that’s no bigger than a face is a different and more intimate experience than looking at something when you have to move your eye or your head around to get it all. I’m not saying that one is better than the other. A large canvas can be impressive, powerful… all sorts of stuff but it is less likely to be the sort of perfect that a little painting can be.

( WHITE ALGA oil on canvas 18″ x 22″ cat 552 )

I’ve made paintings that I think are perfect and these are half a dozen examples. They are not always but usually small paintings and simple compositions with just one or two objects. These have been the paintings of which I am most proud.

( HORSES SKULL oil on canvas 29″ x 21″ cat 598 )

LEMONS

by russelldorey • 18 October 2020
I like painting lemons and the best ones are the big lumpy lemons that you don’t find in supermarkets (a friend went to Brighton to buy lemons for me a month ago). Painting yellow is unlike painting anything else. I can’t build the forms methodically and analytically. The only way that I can finish paintings […]

BEING BORING

by russelldorey • 17 August 2019
Every week I cycle to Rye, up through Ore, down Battery Hill to Pett Level and then along the coast and through the bird sanctuary to Rye Harbour. It’s a fabulous ride and most of it is downhill or on the flat. I meet my Friday lunch buddy and then I peddle home, inland through […]

AFTER POUSSIN

by russelldorey • 4 February 2019
( My Massacre of the Innocents.  Oil on canvas.  34” x 29” ) Over a year ago I began working on my own version of a painting by Nicholas Poussin, the Massacre of the Innocents which he painted between 1625 and 1631. It is a complex painting, a riot of shapes and of colours and it […]

TROUBLE

by russelldorey • 5 December 2018
My father wrote a lot of letters to politicians and to the press. In these letters he would rant about a number of diverse issues, so his letters were not always succinct. I think that he wrote so many letters about the many subjects that exercised him that he may have relied upon the text […]

GLASSES

by russelldorey • 25 November 2018
Someone wrote in my Facebook group (Russell dorey’s studio): “I’ve seen somewhere a piece of your work including a pair of spectacles. Would you ever use the same ‘prop’ twice?” ( Only a heap of broken images. 32″ x 38″ cay 569 ) Yes. I would and I do. I’m like a dog with a […]

DOUBT

by russelldorey • 19 November 2018
When I was younger, so much younger than today I never needed anybody’s help in any way. But now these days are gone and I’m not so self assured… I’ve been looking at this painting. I wrote a post about it when it was finished some months ago, but I’ve already finished it so many […]

NONSENSE

by russelldorey • 7 November 2018
It’s still the afternoon of day one and I’m still in Cezanne’s beautiful studio at Les Lauves. I am jealous of that studio. A little French woman insisted on breaking into my reverie giving a terrible talk in not very good English. There were some interesting facts and some of it was rubbish but some […]

L’ATELIER LES LAUVES

by russelldorey • 7 November 2018
Ten minutes before Cezanne’s Studio reopened after lunch I was waiting on the road outside. Cezanne had his studio built on the hill, LES LAUVES, north of the town in 1901. The studio was then the only building beside the track that is now a busy road with houses and flats along it as Aix […]

A PILGRIMAGE TO AIX-EN-PROVENCE

by russelldorey • 7 November 2018
One month ago I left my house obscenely early one morning in the pitch black and plodded down to Hastings station to catch the first train of the day to Gatwick airport. I didn’t see anyone or a single car moving and I didn’t really believe that the 5.08 train would run. There were however […]

SOUVENIR DE PARIS.

by russelldorey • 3 August 2018
(SOUVENIR DE PARIS oil on canvas. 24″ x 28″) Eight years ago I was in Paris sleeping in Patti Smith’s bed (she wasn’t in it and anyway that’s another story). In the Musee Rodin I used my phone to take a photo of this female torso, a Greek or Roman sculpture. When I had the photograph […]
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