THE SUFFOLK PAINTER

NOTES ON AN ENCOUNTER WITH A LOCAL ARTIST

Portrait of the artist as an old man… Martin Chapman paints the woods near his cottage.

Last weekend, while staying with my pal Tim in rural Suffolk, we went for a walk in the nearby woods. Its high summer so everything was very dry - the fields looked scorched and we wondered if the farmers’ would manage to get a crop in - but it still felt beatifically British: boys fishing with magnets (for what? who knows!) in the river, dragonflies buzzing about, the scent of wild flowers… just delicious.

And then we came across a painter. He was obviously ancient yet determined to paint, his easel connected to a two-wheel contraption that allowed him to tow it around, his palette balanced next to him. He stood barefoot, intensely focused on his work.

At first I thought he might be a local pensioner who had taken up painting in his retirement. Then I took a peak at his canvas and realised he was no Sunday painter, instead this painter was an artist of some talent.

Martin’s portable easel - like a wheelie bag for painters.

I stopped to observe the artist at work and soon learnt that he lives in the same village as Tim and they were acquainted. Thus I was introduced to Martin Chapman and learnt that he had been painting seriously since his teens. And was now 95 years young. Eighty years of painting - that truly is a lifetime dedicated to his art.

Not that Martin ever had enjoyed the big “break” artists need so to be able to live off their work - even when he started out painting landscapes in a style that would be referred to as “Impressionist” the genre was already unfashionable. Post-WW2 British art involved abstraction, kitchen sink realism and existential expressionists.

I didn’t ask but guessed that the young Chapman determined to go his own way rather than follow fashion. Thus he worked as a school teacher until his retirement. When Tim mentioned I was a writer, Martin suggested I write something so to make him famous and thus “raise his prices”.

While I understood he was jesting, there was a hint of urgency in his voice. Martin then mentioned wanting to leave his work to his adult children and, unless he gets “discovered”, his many canvases are not going to be worth a great deal (financially).

Having observed the workings of the music and visual arts industries up close I can testify that visual arts are far more difficult to break into - there’s only a small selection of dealers/curators who can take an artist from obscurity to fame, which ensures most artists remains outside the gilded realm of high prices and big exhibitions.

Where the development of the internet has turned into a boon for some musicians and film makers - and, to a lesser degree, for writers (thus I and many others have Substacks or publish novels on Amazon) - so far the new tech has not helped visual artists in any real sense: no chance a painter uploading an image of a new work to Tik-Tok is going to suddenly win an audience and start earning said individual dosh.

Those artists fortunate enough to be “chosen” by the art industry’s gatekeepers can find immense fortunes flowing their way - the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are wealthier than most of their pop star contemporaries. The vast sums oligarchs and well heeled museums pay to get their hands on work by art’s new stars are rarely spoken of because the sums are shocking: a work by Jenny Saville, a 56 year old British painter, went for £9.5 million in 2018 - and we only know this figure as it was at a Sotheby’s auction. And Saville is a mediocre mannerist, but she’s fashionable - while Chapman never has been.

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Suffolk summer woods and water. Really good, ay?

Looking at Martin’s painting, I noted he was a descendant of the “school of Cezanne”, after the great French impressionist’s fractured landscapes, his work here recalling Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka and Britain’s David Bomberg, both of whom were enamoured with Cezanne while taking his influence forward. .

I mentioned the comparison with Bomberg and Martin agreed, noting his appreciation. I really must write on Bomberg some day as he was a fine artist, lived a challenging, fascinating life and never truly received the attention many lesser figures attract. Whilst alive Bomberg was one of the unlucky ones who never got “chosen”, this led to him dying in poverty aged 66 in 1957.

Martin’s decision to work as a teacher means he has never had to worry about dying in poverty; a wise move as the arts are brutal and many individuals end up damaged from their experiences of trying to succeed in these industries - at my age I’d advise caution to any young person who declared they wanted to be a writer/musician/artist.

Anyway, I’m not famous/well connected enough to be able to help Chapman gain the attention needed to bring largesse his way, but I did like the painting he was working on so thought to share it here. Thus this post.

Tim mentioned there was a documentary made on Martin that’s available on Youtube so, last night post-football, I watched it. Lasting for just under an hour, the doc’ is an informative, engaging watch on a man dedicated to painting. It turns out that he’s also a fine portraitist, while he speaks eloquently on John Constable, another Suffolk landscape painter - admittedly one rather more celebrated than Martin.

Here’s Martin on screen - it is an interesting meditation on dedicating a life to painting.

Anyway, if any Yak readers happen to be art dealers/collectors and interested in Chapman’s painting then let me know and I will suggest how contact might be made.

Below are a couple of photos I took of the land Tim and I were walking through before we encountered Martin. Suffolk is a lovely part of England and - writing this back in Peckham where police sirens blare through the night and intensive road works woke me this morning - I do pine for its lush, peaceful lands.

A lush, lovely river. Hopefully not polluted by a water company.

Fields of gold. Was the land like this when Constable painted in Suffolk? I wonder.

Bumping into Martin reminded me that the last film I saw at the cinema was The Christophers, the Soderbergh feature starring Ian McKellan as an elderly, reclusive (and once celebrated) painter, and Michaela Cole as the “assistant” his conniving adult children plant in his studio. As a satire of art/money/entitled brats/diva artists etc it was entertaining enough, if rather slight. I didn’t ask Martin if he saw it - if he had I doubt he would have been impressed.

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