The fourth in a series of blogs focussing and exploring key works in the Reading Foundation for Art collection selected by the current Trustees.
A TRUSTEE’S CHOICE: Part Four
The Reading paintings of Roy Atkins (b. 1937)
Selected by RFA Trustee Steve Woodford
"As a ‘Reading-ite’, born, bred and schooled here I’ve always been a fan of supporting local businesses and local organisations and artists. My favourite pieces held by the RFA are by Ray Atkins who I have had the pleasure of listening to and meeting via the Foundation. Steve Woodford, RFA Trustee
The painter Ray Atkins works on a monumental scale. Now 85, he still works outside, in places that he loves, come rain or shine, in the same driven way that he has since the 1960s.
Ray Atkins moved to Reading in 1968 to teach at Reading University’s department of fine art where he remained until 1974. It was said that Atkins' style of teaching was to paint alongside the students. Frank Auerbach, who was an occasional visiting tutor at Reading, commented on this in conversation with Atkins: "I was very impressed by that fact that unlike most teachers, you seemed to be spending all your time in the room with the students. Setting an example, the best thing you could do."
Above: Ray Atkins and curator Elaine Blake at his 2017 exhibition of paintings, Reading Museum
Atkins had been heavily influenced by the Modern British master Frank Auerbach while undertaking his Postgraduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art and he later worked in Auerbach’s studio. Clearly there friendship continued as Auerbach was a regular visitor and sometimes tutor at Reading University while Atkins taught in the Fine Art Department.
It was during his time in Reading that Atkins started to work on gigantic paintings out of doors, painting close to the River Thames. "I was reading about Le Corbusier, about how he wanted all his buildings to have a human measurement, and I thought painting should have this connection with the human body as well and so I decided to do a six foot square picture."
Atkins produced an impressive body of work in response to the dramatic changes going on in Reading town centre. The Inner Distribution Road, The Butts Shopping Centre and The Civic Centre were all constructed during this time and Atkins observed their progress and made huge, expressive paintings on site. The Reading Foundation holds three works by the artist including the monumental ‘Building the Inner Distribution Road’ which stands at a staggering 1.84m in width. The construction of the IDR was already underway when Atkins arrived in Reading in 1968 and changing the geography of the town. He painted and drew its progress over several years, working on large boards set up on semi-permanent structures overlooking the building sites. The masterful paintings took time to build into thick layers of gestural paint which remain a lyrical record of the sensations Atkins felt watching the activity.
Above, the painting of the building of the Reading IDR is one of the most abstract of the many drawing Atkins made. It is about how he was feeling, the light, the colour and the noise of the excavating crews and their machinery. The sensations have built into a rhythmic maelstrom of marks and any concrete reality has melted away. His impression is a far cry from this actual image taken by a Reading photographer just before the road opened (photo courtesy of Reading Live).
Above is a study 'in situ' where Atkins set up and drew what he felt at the place where the Holy Brook runs into the River Kennet. The site of busy working Wharfs since the medieval period, by the late 60s they were little visited but still functioning. Atkins was attracted by the industrial ugliness of the area and responded by transforming it into a sensuous celebration of the experience. Atkins typically creates a painting over a period of weeks or months. "In a sense, my paintings are the opposite of Impressionism. My paintings are often constructed over a fairly long timescale of a few days to a few months. It is by the accumulation of several moments, from my observations over a long period and the work of the material that I recreate a new situation, the sensation of the moment”.
As Leon Kossoff wrote in 2003 "Ray Atkins uses the outside world as a studio. The landscapes emerge from day to day involvement with an ever changing subject which is finally committed to a specific visual experience. I have admired these extraordinary paintings for many years."
At the end of this period of creative activity Ray was honoured with a solo exhibition at the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery and included in ‘British Art 74’.
In 1974 Atkins moved to Cornwall, where he taught at Falmouth School of Art. In his own art, he produced a series of paintings of the industrial heritage of Cornwall: old mines, quarries and the open cast china clay pits around St Austell and on Bodmin Moor.He became a member of the London Group in 1978 and in 2009, he moved to France, where he continues to paint.
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