John Pelling (artist)

Last updated

John Pelling
Born1930
Nationality English
Known for Painting
MovementAbstract and religious imagery

John Pelling (born 1930)

was a British artist and clergyman, and is an Associate of the Royal College of Art, known for works on large canvases, abstract works, and paintings of religious imagery.

Personal life

Pelling was born in Hove, East Sussex, in 1930, and educated at Brighton Grammar School. He went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London from 1951 to 1955, [1] studying under John Minton and Francis Bacon [2] amongst others.

Contents

He is married to the 1950s model Zoe Newton (now Zoe Pelling), who is also an artist, and was the most photographed and highly paid model in Britain of her time, [3] appearing on the front of popular magazines such as Picturegoer . [4] She appeared on television and in the Dairy Council advertisements as the "drinka pinta milka day" girl. [5] She was previously married to billionaire businessman David Barclay.

Pelling is one of the judges of the annual International Firework Competition in Monte Carlo. [6]

He has worked from studios in Kensington (west London) and Monte Carlo. He currently has a studio in Chelsea.

Church career

Ordained in 1959 in the Diocese of Chichester, Pelling served in churches in Kensington and Hammersmith, [7] before moving in 1979 to the south of France. His final ecclesiastical appointment before retirement was as Chaplain to the Anglican Church in Nice, France, and he established a family home in Monte Carlo. [2] Pelling has stated that his art is part of his ministry, and that he was encouraged by his ordaining Bishop to pursue his art as part of his religious vocation. [6] Nonetheless, in 1982 he retired from active ministry to devote himself to full-time work as an artist. [7] The Sunday Mirror newspaper reported that Pelling could raise the same money by selling one painting, as working for three months as a clergyman. He was received into the Catholic Church and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in 2011.

Artistic career

Pelling has become known for large scale works on massive canvases, many of his paintings being between 10 and 15 feet in length. His abstract style has left him open to broad interpretation, although religious imagery is always a strong element. For example, "Maternal Movement", which is displayed at the Chelsea Arts Club [8] appears to show an embryo and an umbilical cord, and the angular designs below the central subject appear to represent the female reproductive organs (female genitalia feature in many of Pelling's works), but the non-abstract intrusion of a monstrance containing the sacramental host clearly points to the subject being the unborn Jesus Christ in his mother's womb.

In addition to these abstract styles, Pelling also paints vividly colourful religious arts, such as his 2002 series of fourteen stations of the cross for St Thomas the Apostle Church, Hanwell, [9] whose colourful composition is typical. [10] Pelling has stated that his use of strong primary colours is a reflection of his experience of "the contrasts of parish work [in the Church of England] and its intensity". [6] On occasion Pelling has used just shades of a single colour, not only in abstract work, but also in character painting, such as the shades of blue/green in his work "The Annunciation" commissioned by, and displayed in, St Gabriel's Church, North Acton, in London. [11]

Pelling has also undertaken portrait work. His portrait of Graham Greene was the final one commissioned and painted before Greene's death. [2]

Today works by Pelling are included in the royal collections of Monaco and Kuwait; [6] extensive collections of his work may be found in the National Gallery of Modern Art of Poland, at Gdańsk. [1]

Artistic protest

Art has been Pelling's primary means of protesting his strongly-held opposition to the ordination of women. It has been observed that this position is in stark contrast to Pelling's love of women generally, and of painting nude female forms in particular. [6] In 1998 Pelling staged an exhibition at the Air Gallery, Dover Street, London, of paintings depicting his opposition to women priests and bishops. Images included naked women draped over church altars, large women with their breasts exposed fighting on the ground for a mitre, a coffin bearing the words 'Church of England', and diminutive male priests on their knees in solemn prayer. The exhibition attracted widespread journalistic attention and was reported in British newspapers ranging from the Daily Mirror, through The Independent, to The Daily Telegraph. [6] [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caravaggio</span> Italian painter (1571–1610)

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanwell</span> Human settlement in England

Hanwell is a town in the London Borough of Ealing. It is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Ealing Broadway and had a population of 28,768 as of 2011. It is the westernmost location of the London post town.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Frankenthaler</span> American painter (1928–2011)

Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades, she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as color field. Born in Manhattan, she was influenced by Greenberg, Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock's paintings. Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including a 1989 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Color field</span> Art movement

Color field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists. Color field is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlo Crivelli</span> Italian Renaissance painter (c. 1430–c. 1495)

Carlo Crivelli was an Italian Renaissance painter of conservative Late Gothic decorative sensibility, who spent his early years in the Veneto, where he absorbed influences from the Vivarini, Squarcione, and Mantegna. He left the Veneto by 1458 and spent most of the remainder of his career in the March of Ancona, where he developed a distinctive personal style that contrasts with that of his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlo Maratta</span> Italian painter (1625–1713)

Carlo Maratta or Maratti was an Italian painter, active mostly in Rome, and known principally for his classicizing paintings executed in a Late Baroque Classical manner. Although he is part of the classical tradition stemming from Raphael, he was not exempt from the influence of Baroque painting and particularly in his use of colour. His contemporary and friend, Giovanni Bellori, wrote an early biography on Maratta.

Ben Long is an American painter and the grandson of noted artist McKendree Robbins Long.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cesare Dandini</span> Italian painter (1596–1657)

Cesare Dandini was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in his native city of Florence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Burchett</span> British artist

Richard Burchett (1815–1875) was a British artist and educator on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who was for over twenty years the Headmaster of what later became the Royal College of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelino da Besozzo</span> Italian painter

Michelino Molinari da Besozzo was a notable fifteenth century Italian painter and illuminator, who was widely praised for his work. He worked mostly in Milan and Lombardy, and was employed by the Visconti family, rulers of Milan. Michelino's work follows the traditions of the Lombard School, and maintains the Trecento style.

<i>Vincent</i> (opera)

Vincent is an opera in three acts by Einojuhani Rautavaara first performed in 1990. The libretto is by the composer, and consists of scenes from the life of the artist Vincent van Gogh, told in retrospect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Petley</span> British painter

Roy Petley is a British painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Turner Durrant</span> English painter

Roy Turner Durrant was a 20th-century English abstract artist. He was born in Lavenham, Suffolk, England on 4 October 1925. He had a love of drawing from an early age which continued as a driving force throughout his life. His lifelong motto was "ars longa, vita brevis" "art is never ending, life is short" which he may have first seen in the bell tower of Lavenham Church, and following his wish was also carved on his tombstone in Lavenham cemetery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johannes Adam Simon Oertel</span> American painter

Johannes Adam Simon Oertel was a German-American Episcopal clergyman and artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonia Gechtoff</span> American artist (1925-2018)

Sonia Gechtoff was an American abstract expressionist painter. Her primary medium was painting, but she also created drawings and prints.

Lila Katzen, born Lila Pell, was an American sculptor of fluid, large-scale metal abstractions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Charles Brewer</span> British painter

Henry Charles Brewer (1866–1950) was a British painter well known in the first half of the 20th century for his watercolour landscapes and architectural paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Priest</span> British painter (1810–1850)

Alfred Priest was an English painter of landscapes and marine artist, and a member of the Norwich School of painters. Born in Norwich, he was educated to follow his father in becoming a pharmacist, but he left home to work at sea, before briefly working as an apprentice surgeon.

References

  1. 1 2 "John Pelling (biography)". Jackson & Hickey. Retrieved 30 May 2011.[ permanent dead link ]
  2. 1 2 3 "About the artist John Pelling". London: St Thomas, Hanwell. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  3. "Barclay brothers come out of purdah with biography", The Sunday Times, 3 August 2003.
  4. "Picturegoer – 1957". Picturegoer.net. Archived from the original on 13 April 2001. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
  5. "Milk Bottle Museum", The Birmingham Post (archived at thefreelibrary.com)
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The Reverend's Feast of Flesh". The Daily Telegraph (London). 7 March 1998. Archived from the original on 26 February 2016. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
  7. 1 2 3 Garner, Clare (13 April 1998). "The Priest who Paints what he Preaches" . The Independent (London). Archived from the original on 13 June 2022. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
  8. Recorded and illustrated here Archived 2003-05-10 at the Wayback Machine .
  9. "Stations of the Cross". London: St Thomas, Hanwell. Retrieved 12 June 2011.
  10. The work, and in particular its use of vivid colour, is reported in this on-line article.
  11. "Art & Devotion". London: St Gabriel, North Acton. Retrieved 3 September 2019.