The Directors of Marlborough Fine Art are delighted to announce their forthcoming exhibition of new work by Bill Jacklin opening in London on 5 June.

The Artists writes: “My paintings have to have a sense of place. The subjects invariably are locations that I have made drawings of whether it is the pulsating energy of the crowds in Times Square or the rhythmic and repetitive movement of the figures and their shadows diving into the waves in Coney Island or Cape Cod.

Almost all my paintings have become concerned with the passing of time and my place in it. I respond to the sea and the stars at night, the illuminations over the Great Lawn in Central Park and the road with shadows with birds flying above me. I have watched the skaters at the Wollman Rink forming patterns with their silhouettes and shadows against the ice and I have seen the clouds passing over me with their shapes against the sun. The seemingly fast track of the seasons is almost cinematic as the sunbathers relaxing in the park suddenly are bent against the wind and snow as they cross the street in New York City.”

New York City has inspired Jacklin since his arrival there in 1985. His work has explored much of New York including Grand Central Station, Roseland Ballroom, and Coney Island, among others. In the majority of Jacklin’s paintings, emphasis is on the essence of place, on the sensation of being in an environment rather than on the topography and details of the setting itself. In this exhibition, the multiple renderings of specific locations, such as Times Square, Little Italy, and the Rockefeller Center skating rink, allow the viewer to revisit these spaces. Yet placing these scenes in time is nearly impossible, as if it is only the memory of the location that is actually being depicted. The recognizability of the settings without specific details is apparent in the triptych ‘Hot Legs, Times Square, NYC, 2011.’

In her essay for the New York exhibition 2012 Margaret Priest writes of Jacklin: …while remaining quintessentially English, he has distilled all that is quintessentially New York and placed it on canvas. Rather than capturing a likeness, he conjures a feeling. Jacklin’s capacity to express the essence of the city distinguishes him from those artists who document street life. His is not documentary practice. He is not an artist who catalogues his surroundings.  Jacklin is an existential artist insistently affirming his place in the world through his urgent and emotive marking of where he is, what he sees and how he feels.

Born in 1943, Bill Jacklin studied at the Royal College of Art in London. Initially concerned with abstraction, his work moved to figuration in the mid 1970s, when it became preoccupied with the effects of light and movement. Moving to New York in 1985, he has concentrated on painting 'Urban Portraits' of 'the city' in all its guises; from large scale canvases of crowds in flux to intimate moments in Seurat-like etchings.

In 2004 Bill had a solo exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art London, of Venetian Paintings and Monotypes. The Venetian theme was continued in some of the works in his most recent exhibition at the London gallery in December 2008, People and Places II. Other recent exhibitions include a solo Paintings, Prints and Monotypes at the University Gallery, Newcastle (2008) and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2008. Bill's work features in a number of public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Tate Gallery, London and the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven.

A fully illustrated catalogue will be published with an introduction by Ihor Holubiszky, Senior Curator at the Museum of Art at McMaster University, Ontario.

Marlborough Fine Art
6 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4BY United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 76295161
mfa@marlboroughfineart.com
www.marlboroughfineart.com

Opening hours
Monday - Friday from 10am to 5.30pm
Saturday from 10am to 4pm
(Closed Saturdays during August)