steve mitchell works for sale: november 2015

Works for Sale November 2015!

R S (STEVE) MITCHELL !

In a Circle They Stood, 2014!Oil on linen (framed)!

50cm x 205cm!Price: £5,500 ex VAT!

RS (STEVE) MITCHELL

Line of Sight, 2015!Oil on linen!


RS (STEVE) MITCHELL

And the Earth Turned, 2015!Oil on linen!


RS (STEVE) MITCHELL

Second Unit, 2010!Oil on linen!


RS (STEVE) MITCHELL

!In a Circle They Stood!!Steve Mitchell grew up in Wallsend (literally, ‘the end of the Roman wall’) on the north banks of the River Tyne in Northumberland. The area was, throughout the 1960s, predominantly given over to ship-building and mining, both industries that dominated the already dramatic skyline with their mixture of giant cranes and towering pit-head gantries. This vision of man’s imposing constructions in the natural world was interrupted only by bomb sites and remains of concrete and stone built defences against sea-borne invaders.!!This coastline has attracted many great artists over the past centuries: Thomas Gurtin, JMW Turner, Winslow Homer to name a few. It has inspired these artists with the sense of history, Romance and mystery that envelops the stretching, isolated beaches and emanates from the dramatic and quite remarkable skies and light.!!“The beach in this painting is in Druridge Bay, Northumberland and is a place that I like to visit and stay at a few times every year. The study for the painting was made on my iphone. I simply took a 180-degree panoramic photograph of the beach as a storm rolled in - the sky was exactly as I’ve depicted here.” The beach on the left hand side is the same beach as on the right, painted just as Mitchell photographed it while turning around. !!The circle of black-clad figures is also real, although as a situation it comes from a different day and a different beach. These figures in black were a real and self-involved group, which stood out from everyone else on the beach and intrigued Mitchell as he watched and photographed them from a distance for quite some time. !!That Druridge Bay was thought to be a possible landing place for a German invasion throughout World War II adds to the intrigue of this painting. There are still the remains of the anti-tank concrete blocks built to defend these beaches right along this part of Britain’s coastline.!!!!!!!

NOTES ON PAINTINGS !

!Line of Sight!This painting features a scenic assistant, Amanda, who has worked with Mitchell and other top British Scenic Artists on numerous feature films over the last few decades. She is setting up a tripod fitted with a Nodal head camera (a Fujifilm S5 Pro with a Nikon lens) on the precipice of the Llanberis Pass in Snowdonia, Wales.!!It is the assistants and those who work out of sight to produce the vast achievements of cinematic image making who really attract Mitchell. “I wasn’t expecting people to be interested in these film industry paintings because they’re not depicting the glamorous or exciting part of that world. It’s the drudgery, the industrial scale, behind-the-scenes hard work and mess that I know from working as a Scenic Artist.”! !Scenic Artists paint backdrops (or ‘backings’) of vast, panoramic skies, landscapes or cityscapes, often to match real-world locations in the production of a film. The exterior scenes of the film are shot in real-world locations and interior scenes in built sets in a studio, with backings visible through windows, doorways, archways, etc. Since the introduction of CGI, painted backings are less common, although still favoured by many Production Designers and Directors.! !To paint these backings on such a huge scale (Mitchell has worked on many up to 12m x 200m) the Scenic Artist works from panoramic photographs or visuals produced by the Art Department. The reference images are digitally composited from a number of stills, but are not usually accurate enough to work directly from. Time constraints don’t allow projection or ‘squaring up’ of the images either and, in any case, quite often the artist has to change the time of day or viewpoint as they paint. Scenic Artists use a number of specially developed perspectival systems and techniques so that the resulting vast backings read as natural views. All of this is done in an industrial environment on the studio back lot, with emulsion paint, cherry pickers and spray packs. “We always just work by eye,” says Mitchell, “and although we do rely on photographs for reference, in thirty five years I don’t think I’ve ever copied a photograph.”! !In his own paintings, Mitchell takes the use of optical technology further and uses a Nodal head camera to eliminate parallax when shooting panoramic reference shots on location. The Nodal head rotates the camera around an optical point inside the lens (rather than the camera’s centre of gravity), which removes the distortion of parallax from the panoramic images. When Mitchell develops these reference photographs into his large-scale paintings, the resulting image is incredibly strong and possesses a cinematic quality that becomes immersive when you stand in front of the work. The complicated, subtle, ‘un-natural’ image affects the way we see the painting and gives the viewer a stronger sense of ‘being there’.! !!


!And the Earth Turned!“For me, landscape wears the scars and bears witness to the vast aeons of time. The boundary of our earthly lives – the coastline – expresses this as much, if not more, than any other place.” !!Hartland, the rugged and ancient coastline and stretch of cliffs in Devon, which inspired Rudyard Kipling and many other artists and writers, are a long favourite subject of Mitchell’s. Their evidence of ancient landscapes and expression of the ‘physical’ layers of time in the rocks and secluded beaches contrast with the insignificant length of time man has been living on earth. This painting features Mitchell’s daughter, Rosalyn, herself now working in the film industry, and its location is a beach around the corner from Hartland Quay. It is a coastline that Mitchell has returned to and painted a number of times.!!Mitchell’s fascination with light comes from his fascination with Renaissance and 19th Century artists and from the importance of its use in film (the use of natural versus artificial light, the effects of light on the mood of a film and what it says about a particular moment in a story). In this way, film follows on from artists like Caravaggio, Turner, Rembrandt et al, all of who deeply understood the power of light to express drama, illuminate a world, create mystery and develop a narrative. In this painting, Mitchell depicts two sources of light which highlight the two subjects of the painting: The natural light streams from its unseen source, through heavy clouds rolling in from the horizon, to light up the ancient, stratified rocks and ocean pools; while the artificial light, again from a source unseen, highlights the face of the artist’s daughter. !!This painting speaks of the insignificance of human life and activity in the face of the vast and enduring power of the natural world. But it also speaks of the ordinary cycles of human life; of the patterns of parents and children, and of how this chain of humanity is also continuous and filled with its own sense of endurance, mystery and powerful longevity. !!!!!!


!Second Unit!This earlier painting by Mitchell (2010) combines a landscape from the Sierra Nevada in Southern Spain, where Mitchell was working on a film quite some years ago, with a depiction of a film crew who made up the second unit for a commercial film being shot in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel.!!In filmmaking, the ‘location’ refers to the place where a film crew is both filming actors and recording their dialogue. It is a misconception to think that filming ‘on location’ takes place in the location where the story is set … many times this is simply not the case. Many films are produced combining scenes shot on a location where the story is set, scenes shot in the studio and scenes shot in completely different locations. Often, a ‘second unit’ film crew is sent to film photographic sequences on location (with no action or dialogue), which are then edited into the final film alongside studio shots. (For example, Steve Bochco’s NYPD Blue was mainly shot in Los Angeles, but used second unit footage of New York to create the atmosphere, colour, light and feeling of New York.)!!Like many of Mitchell’s paintings, this is not so much a landscape painting in the traditional sense but a painting about the way that we make images of landscapes. Strongly evident is Mitchell’s staggering talent for transferring cinematic panoramas onto the painted canvas (the real impact becomes evident when you stand in front of one of Mitchell’s large panoramic paintings and feel like you are standing within the scene - it is an effect that feels much like watching a film in a cinema). !!These panoramic paintings display Mitchell’s capacity to translate the human eyes’ width of view (able to take in the vastness of a horizon) and depth of field (able to perceive the distance of a whole sky) at the same time, and to transfer this perception onto a two-dimensional picture plane. Another feature of Mitchell’s unique ability and style in paint is that each painting appears gestural and painterly up close but snaps into focus as you step further back from its surface. It is this arsenal of optical tricks learnt both from film and the Old Masters, distortions of perspective to mirror the way we actually see, and visual illusions, which is the real focus of Mitchell’s work. Landscape is the backing, but it is the human construction of images that is the subject of these works.!!The final question about this painting, one that Mitchell won’t definitively answer, is whether the painting is actually located in the real world or whether it is a painting of a second unit film crew stood on a mound of rubble, in front of a backing of the Sierra Nevada, painted at speed in industrial conditions by a couple of scenic artists in the back lot at Pinewood Studios.!!


Mitchell was born in Wallsend, Northumberland in 1954 and trained at the Leicester College of Art and Design before being hired by famous BBC Scenic Artist, Brian Bishop in the early 1970s. Mitchell was trained by Bishop and worked under him for a number of years before moving into feature films. Since then he has worked on too many films to remember, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, James Bond (including Spectre this year), Everest, Woman in Gold, The End of the Affair … the list goes on.!!During the summer of 2007, Mitchell returned to the northeast for three weeks to walk the beaches of Northumberland, the home ground of his childhood. Armed with cameras, sketchpads and notebooks, he started at Berwick upon Tweed, walking south towards Lindisfarne, staying three to four nights each at Bamburgh, Seahouses and Alnmouth – photographing, sketching, taking colour notes and writing: “In Lindisfarne, I waited for more than three hours on the freezing cold beach with my camera and tripod – just to get the right light at sunset, capturing the magical ‘golden hour’ light. At Bamburgh, I spent many hours over several days trying to find the best angle of the beach and castle, once more awaiting the perfect light. One grey, stormy evening, just as I was losing hope, packing my camera away for the night, the sun came out from under a cloud and illuminated the castle. Near to me was a photographer who had also been in despair, we both flew into a panic as we tried to quickly unpack cameras – it was the kind of light that you might sometimes wait a whole year for.”!!The photographs Mitchell took on this three week walk were to form the basis of his first solo exhibition as an artist, Northern Light, held at Celia Lendis Galleries in 2010. Since then, Mitchell has had 4 more solo exhibitions, received reviews for both his art and film work in magazines such as the New York Times, LA Times, Art of England magazine, Artists & Illustrators magazine and numerous regional and general publications and has recorded a number of interviews about both his art and film work. !!Mitchell’s paintings are always in demand and there is always an air of expectation around the completion and presentation of his new works. He is finding more time to spend in the studio these days and as interest in his work from buyers and art writers continues to grow, so does Mitchell’s own interest in exploring and expressing his experience of the world and the human drive to capture it in images.!!

BRIEF ARTIST BIOGRAPHY !

Steve Mitchell on Druridge Beach, Northumberland!

•  Works are housed and may be viewed at the artist’s studio in the Cotswolds – or if you would prefer to view elsewhere in the UK or outside, this can be arranged on a sale or return basis. !

!•  I have extensive experience delivering artwork anywhere in the world and am very happy to organise freight and insurance

quotations on your behalf. Packing, freight, any custom duties or taxes and insurance is payable by the purchaser. !!•  The prices shown here are exclusive of UK VAT of 20% . If you are purchasing outside the European Union then you do

NOT have to pay the VAT on purchase. (However, import taxes and duties may apply in your own country, of which I can advise.). At the present time, Revolver Days Ltd is not VAT registered and until it is required to register then VAT only applies to a portion of the sale price. !

!•  Purchasing paintings over a period of time (monthly payments) is an option, and I am happy to discuss this.!!•  All copyright in the works remains the property of the artist.!!•  More information about the artist, including an excellent filmed interview of him discussing his work can be found on the

website www.revolverdays.com. If you would like copies of press articles, further information on film work or any other information, I am very happy to email it.!

!•  If you wish to purchase a painting or would like further information, please contact Celia Broughton on +44 (0)7889 749 345

or email [email protected]. !

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steve mitchell works for sale: november 2015

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