An Interior Scene Sarah Beddington
This slightly unsettling painting by Sarah Beddington has been beguiling me for a number of years. The artist is, of course, now known mainly for her film and performance work, always exploring the uncertain relationship between myth and reality, the constant anticipation of and reflection upon change in our lives. And, here, we see exactly those same challenging themes.
The work is executed with precise and exquisite touches of closely-toned watercolour, each area of colour clearly distinguished from the adjacent: walls, floor, skirting boards, deck chair - with sheet of torn canvas flying in some invisible waft of wind - all neatly described. There is something here, which reminds me of the measured handling of colour in the late landscape oil paintings of Sir Roger de Grey, the Principal at Beddington’s first college, the City and Guilds of London Art School, where she was studying in the early 1990s. But, unlike the latter’s still, often misty, dream-like landscapes, Beddington’s hush is only that moment of sudden shock that divides a drama that has just happened from the immanence of something about to occur. This is full of implicit movement, there is also threat: the mandolin, casually cast to one side; the open door and illuminated corridor and stairs beyond; and, of course, the broken deckchair. A moment ago, there was music; a pleasant interior accompanied by paintings on the wall; a rakish deckchair, suggestive of holiday; a closed door on the rather barren corridor beyond. All that has disappeared in a brief - and disastrous? - moment. This is, surely, a still, sliced out of a film? Again, one has to consider the influence of an early teacher, the leading experimental film-maker, Malcolm Le Grice, who was so important to the development of the Fine Art curriculum at Central St. Martin’s, where Beddington studied in the mid-1990s.
I believe this picture to date from the later 1990s and it is already imbued with the poetry and power of Beddington’s whole career: a painting full of hidden and unresolved narratives; a painting waiting for us to find out, and reflect upon, the traces and circumstances of our lives.
35.5cms x 53cms
61cms x 76cms