04 NAP_Fergus Hare_YUMPU

NEW

ART

PROJECTS

Fred Mann

Foreword

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When I first saw a painting by Fergus Hare it was in the kind of group exhibition where

the works hung started down by the skirting boards and finished somewhere above the

picture rail, each work, and each artist fighting for attention. I even recall a work hung,

rather unceremoniously on a door. I was immediately reminded of Rowlandson’s classic

Exhibition Room of 1808. Despite these challenges I was captivated by the painting

I saw by Fergus, and I imagined how his work might look in an expanded, solo exhibition.

In 2015 when I opened New Art Projects in Hackney I had four new exhibition spaces

at my disposal and of course I invited Fergus to make a solo show for one of them. On a

visit to his Sussex studio I was struck again by how his seemingly traditional works were

actually a complete contemporary re-working of an earlier classic English painting genre,

that was being expanded and brought right up to date.

I have always been fascinated by the moment between day and night when there is

a magical hour or golden hour where the dying light creates not only colours but also

atmospheres. Many of the works Fergus had made captured that exact moment and his

paintings seemed caught between night and day, realism and fantasy, the landscape and

the inner emotional landscape of the mind.

Constellation, 2015

Oil on canvas, 45x75cm

PRIVATE COLLECTION SUSSEX

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It was on this first studio visit that I also discovered Fergus’s works on paper. I was drawn

to his charcoal drawings of the moon, made by looking through the telescope in his garden.

While this series initially looked historical and my first thought was of John Dee, I realised

that they were part of a personal obsession for Fergus, who expressed wonder and awe

of all things relating to space and space travel. This fascination expanded into later works,

with paintings of Jodrell Bank and of the Space Shuttle to name a few.

The thing that unites these subjects together in his practice is romance, but not in a corny

or slushy way. His interest is artistic, and full of historical references. The night sky IS full

of stars. Going to the moon has captivated artists from Galileo to Georges Méliès, and

the magical hour of the evening has bewitched artists from Samuel Palmer to Aert Van Der

Neer to Stanley Kubrick who even developed a special lens to film dusk and candle light.

Capturing the light in art has also changed through time with science. Joseph Wright

of Derby reflected this in his enlightenment work “an experiment on a bird in an air pump”

showing the experiment lit by candlelight. Fergus Hares’ work also marries the progress of

science with the magic hour, and the tradition of oil painting with the launching of a shuttle,

and the miles into space we can now see.

Mountains, 2015


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Since 2015 Fergus Hare has continued to surprise me. When selecting our third major

painting show with him in 2019, he arrived with a portfolio of pastels, saying “oh, I have been

doing a few of these……...” this resulted in an astonishing show of new works on paper,

that extended his fascination with the landscape and with light, through a new medium.

The delicate powdery surface of his pastel series mirrored the powdery haze of heat and

light at sunset, and added to the diffuse and filtered effects that he had created in oils.

During 2020, we held a new painting show; these works by circumstance are more

domestic, painted at home, in acrylics. They show however a continuation of his passions,

a garden gate in twilight surrounded by white flowers hung alongside two magical sunsets

with trees in silhouetted against a sky in flame. Alongside these, a charming group of really

domestic interiors, which are both tender and stylish and show a beautiful new palette.

It is with great pleasure that we can bring all of these projects, series and innovations

together here in this publication. I am extremely grateful to Fergus Hare for his work

on this book, to Christian Küsters and Barbara Nassisi for their beautiful design, and to

Jenny Uglow for her wonderful insightful essay.

— Fred Mann, Director, New Art Projects

Untitled, 2015


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Jenny Uglow

Fergus Hare

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Fergus Hare’s gaze reaches into space, to the

moon and stars. It sweeps down to grand

landscapes, mountains and trees, and on to

crowds on city streets, children on a beach,

figures in the snow. Finally it reaches into the

house itself, the domestic space. Paradoxically,

this wheeling trajectory from distant to

intimate is not a narrowing of vision but an

expansion: in Hare’s recent paintings a

bookcase or an array of family washing can

seem as resonant as the galaxies above.

Hare has drawn and painted since he was

a child. He was an art student at Camberwell,

and when he left the Fine Art course he

studied Illustration at Norwich, liking its

emphasis on drawing, the concentration on

subjects outside one’s self. His combination

of technical skill and empathy shows in early

drawings of his grandmother in bed and his ill

father wearily lifting his spectacles off his face.

Fields at Colfryn, 2007

Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 cm


Harvest #3, 2009

Oil on paper, 15 x 25 cm


Dad In Bed #15, 2003

Charcoal on paper 20x15cm

COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST

Empty Chair, 2004



Granny In Bed, 2000

Pencil on paper 20x35cm


Sunlight On The Wall , 2001


In both, a steely precision plays against a

freedom of line that speak of tenderness,

closeness, a determination not to forget –

a blend also found in early oils like Empty

Chair and Sunlight on the Wall.

A balance of close observation with

emotion characterises Hare’s work over the

past years. As a landscape painter he is out to

catch the moment, a trick of evening light, a

haze over mountains. For a time he painted

outside, and there is a sensuous, tactile

immersion in many of his oils: the rough

squares of drystone walls on a hill, in Fields at

Colfryn, 2007; the bronze curves of Harvest

#3; the pattern of fields and horizon in

Looking Across to Hythe, both 2009. This thick,

rich depth is carried into later paintings, like

the scumbled sky and waves of Effects of the

Night, 2015, suggesting how fidelity to a scene

or atmosphere has always coincided with

a delight in materials and process, in the

way that a block of colour pushes against

another or a sharp angle intersects a curve.

Hare is happy to let paint or ground dictate.

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His acrylics on linen, for example, look

deliberately ‘unfinished’ because he likes the

effect of the weave itself, the way a patch

laid bare can shed light, be itself. Accident

is important. Talking of his work he often

says ‘ I’ll just see what comes of it’.

Hare moved from earth to sky with his

planetary and lunar studies of 2014–15.

These haunting works mix charcoal and ink

drawings, with etchings, vivid watercolours

and silk screen prints. In some drawings

ink or charcoal flows and recedes across

the face of the moon; in later acrylics the

moon glides above mountains in a haze

of blue, or shimmers through misty trees.

The astronomical studies drew on a youthful

interest in space – from his early teens, he

says, he would look at the night sky, and ‘get

lost in trying to understand everything, and

the distances we were dealing with’. His

interest gained sharper focus when he got his

first telescope, but it was not until he came

across Galileo’s 1609 drawings of the moon

Moons, 2015

Installation charcoal on paper

various sizes

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Moon, 2014


Earthshine #2, 2014


Looking across to Hythe #2, 2009

Oil on paper 15x25cm


Effects of The Night, 2015

Oil on panel 30x50cm


that he saw how profoundly science and

feeling could be combined. From then on,

he began to sketch the moon differently,

not searching for scientific accuracy but for

‘a more emotional result’. The delight is

also formal: the ‘button moon’, a changing

sphere, against the dark canvas of space.

One lunar drawing carries the inscription ‘

Astronauts are the luckiest people alive’.

As if chasing this, Hare produced dramatic

canvases of space exploration. In We Live

We Die, 2015, based on the space-shuttle’s

last journeys, the rocket carrying the shuttle

rises from a rolling cloud of dust, soaring in

defiance of gravity, a modern yet Romantic

symbol of aspiration, our sense of time.

In Hare’s work the monument to the doomed

Apollo 1 space mission feels like an ancient

temple; the dark opening beneath ethereal

outlines of rockets and pylons in Baikonur

Cosmodrome, 2018, suggests a vault beneath

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Astronauts are The Luckiest

People to Ever Exist, 2011

Charcoal on paper, 20x30cm

PRIVATE COLLECTION

a pyramid; in the Canadarm series, 2018,

mechanical robotic arms spiral upside-down

across a blue-brushed void. One evocative

series, from 2015–2018, shows solitary

satellite dishes pointing to the heavens,

as if waiting for a message that may never

come, or sending one that may never

be heard – here I am, this is who we are.

We Live, We Die, 2015


Canadarm #2, 2018


Abandoned In Place, 2017

Acrylic on canvas, 59x78cm

Receiver, 2019

Oil on linen, 35x56cm

PRIVATE COLLECTION

Baikonur Cosmodrome, 2018

Mixed media 39x52cm

Hare’s art looks back in time, as well as

space, in a conscious acknowledgment of

the British tradition of landscape painting.

The references are no academic game: he

feels that these painters are still our best

teachers in learning to ‘see’ the countryside

in a profound sense. We can feel their

presences in the background of many of

Hare’s paintings: the spirit of Samuel

Palmer inhabiting downland landscapes; the

tumbling trees of Gainsborough’s drawings

clothing a hillside; the ghosts of Richard

Wilson and early Turner hovering over the

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mountain and lake of Some Pieces Still Remain

and the ‘Sublime’ oil of Rockfall, where the

cloud rises beyond the gorge like an inverted

waterfall. In both these works, from 2018

Hare does not copy the artists he admires, but

translates them into his own, modern idiom.

Constable’s clouds race over his Landscape,

2020, with its sweeping view from the South

Downs across the Weald, to the misty

North downs beyond. Yet perhaps the most

striking feature of this apparently traditional

landscape is not the careful detail of fields

and copses, but the gap of air between them

Dragon Clouds, 2018

Pastel on card, 45x64cm

Inner Turmoil, 2019


Some Pieces Still Remain, 2018

Oil on panel, 30x50cm

Tiny Dots Of Light (Version #1), 2018


Rockfall, 2018

Oil on panel, 31x41cm

Landscape 2020, 2020


and the dark, layered clouds above, a

separation of horizons, as if this is a space

in which the artist breathes.

This many-layered painting followed a

series of pastels exploring different cloud

effects, from dense cumulus spilling over

hills and lake in Dragon Clouds, 2018 to the

thundercloud billowing up from a sunset

horizon in Inner Turmoil, 2019. Looming

clouds make their appearance too, in his

reworking of Joseph Wright’s paintings with

their revolutionary use of moonlight, in two

versions of Tiny Dots of Light, catching a

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Tiny Dots Of Light ( Version #2), 2019


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Evening; A Daily Astronomical Event, 2019


car’s headlights on dark moors – a brave

and original subject. In the first version,

a pastel of 2018, the moon glints through

a misty gap, mirrored by its reflection below;

in the oil, painted a year later, it swims in

a clear sky, casting a dazzling light on the

clouds and silvering the winding river. In

the change from pastel to oil, the mood

clears like the sky itself.

Hare returns often to recurrent themes,

like rests or pauses: twilight beyond

mountains, silhouetted trees against sunsets.

This can appear formulaic, but it allows

himself to play with light, a key subject:

as the title of one oil, Evening; a Daily

Astronomical Event, 2019, points out, that

shifting light is something we take for

granted, yet full of wonder. Indeed in two

long pastels, Untitled #3 and #4, 2019, light is

all there is, the colours blending and shading,

the colours of evening sun and duller rain,

serene, meditative spaces. Light is different

when it snows, and Hare’s snowscapes,

building on a limited palette of whites and

greys, blues and creams, are at once evocative

and a reminder that a painting, pastel or a

drawing which we respond to imaginatively as

a ‘place’ is in fact a two-dimensional melée of

marks on paper or canvas. When snow falls

in Britain we look out of our windows and

marvel at a changed world, the familiar in

disguise. Hare cleverly conveys this clash of

known and strange, his curving brushstrokes

creating a soft bulk of white against the hard

geometry of windows and roofs, or the

spiders-web of trees and branches. Human

figures stand out in this natural, yet alien,

element. He points out that the impact is

largely to do with pigment. ‘White paint

works so differently to colours – the effects

just happen, almost beyond one’s control.’

Almost is the key word: if snow, or white

pigment, effects a transformation, its

mechanism is that of the artist’s. Thus the

jumping-off point for Snow Scene #4, 2020,

was a photographic reference, but then

everything was changed, – the time of day

moved to the evening, Hare’s favourite time;

Untitled Pastel #3, 2019


Untitled Pastel #4, 2019


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Snow Scene #4, 2020

Acrylic on paper, 37x53cm

Crowd #2, 2020

Acrylic on linen, 60x80cm

unexplained. And while the language of

bodies suggests action and character, the

mingled shapes and clothes fall into patterned

juxtapositions of colour. To Hare, this visual

effect is what matters: if we want a narrative

we must make it ourselves. The suggestion

of a story withheld imbues many works. It is

expressed, for example, by the backs of the

family launching the boat in Untitled #2,

2020. The child is already knee-deep but the

adults are only edging into the water, poised

on the margins of sea and sand, marked of

further by a drizzle of blue, running down

from the darker sea beyond, an accident of

paint directing us away from the ‘story’ to

the painterly qualities, the outlined limbs,

the touches of light on shoulders and calves,

the blurred green horizon of the bay.

Crowd #3, 2020



Untitled #2 2020, 2020


the glowing yellow sky made the shadows

change; the tree and figure and tracks in the

snow were added ‘to give a narrative’.

As that comment suggests, the paintings

often seem to hold a story. They are

representational but not ‘realist’, often

shading into the surreal or nudging towards

abstraction. Each of Hare’s crowd scenes has

a distinct, immediately graspable atmosphere

– the chill of a winter road, the shimmer

of heat haze round a shrine, the dust of a

market place – yet the place and time are

To Hare’s mild irritation, viewers often

want to place a scene, to ask ‘who are those

people?’ or ‘where is that mountain?’ (I found

myself doing this too, asking ‘Is that your

allotment?’ when looking at the bronzy,

Samuel Palmer-esque At the Allotments 2013).

For Hare, these questions are beside the

point. His many ‘ Untitled’, or generic

‘Mountain’ or ‘Snow Scene’ titles, are a way of

cold-shouldering such questions. And while

the titles invite us to let our imagination roam

they also direct us to look at the work as an

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At The Allotments, 2013

Oil on panel 20x30cm


are close without touching, like the couple

in the snow with the dog between them in

Untitled #3, 2021. When they do touch, the

image may be blurred, as in the hazy acrylic

on linen of a beach scene with parasols in

Untitled #6, 2021, or fiercely formalised, like

Young Lovers, 2019, where the shapes are

compressed by the view from above, their

shadows dancing beneath them and soles

of their shoes tipping upwards towards us.

aesthetic object, to unravel a different story

of the choices– perhaps not even clear to

the artist - and the practical and technical

decisions that dictate its final physical form.

The denial of precise titles, is matched by

Hare’s determination not to show faces. There

are a few exceptions, but on the whole his

people turn their backs or look away. ‘I want

them to be anonymous’ he says, ‘not portraits

but shapes, becoming almost abstract, figures

in a landscape’. This reduction does not

cancel feeling, indeed it can intensify it:

witness the loving attention to the sheen of

the child’s dress, the placing of buttons, the

stripy socks and play of shadows in Untitled

#4, 2020, the intensity of focus in sympathy

with the little girl’s own absorption as she

grips the handlebars. But like many of his

figures, she is alone in space. His squared-off

people rarely make contact. Sometimes they

Untitled #3 2021, 2021


Untitled #6 2021, 2021


Untitled #4 2020, 2020


Young Lovers, 2019


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From Here, I Can Still See The Stars, 2020



Untitled #2 2019, 2019


and in figures like the spectral woman with

her high heels and long coat in the city

square, Untitled #2. 2019, or the holidaysnap-style

girl on the ferry, with her polkadot

skirt like a fan in Untitled No 1, 2021.

In all these, as in the isolated satellite dishes,

there is a feeling not of loneliness exactly,

but of individuals being essentially alone –

and of the artist as observer, watching from

the margins.

Hopper may have fitted, Hare thinks, with

his interest in architectural forms. He has a

feel for the shape and heft of buildings and

constructions, from barns and farmhouses to

pylons and the New York skyscrapers in his

sketchbook pages. Power Station, 2018, turns

Battersea Power Station into a mix of massive

structures and reflected light, a metaphor of

bulk and fragility, permanence and transience.

The sunlit Balcony, 2020, is an arrangement

of pure angles and light. The side of a white

weatherboard house, at first a pale cube, turns

out to be alive with sunset reflections, blue,

green and pink (Untitled #5, 2021)

Power Station, 2018


Untitled No 1, 2019


One of Hare’s teenage passions was for

Edward Hopper’s lonely urban scenes ,

which gave him, he said ‘a way into painting’.

This interest has long been set aside ‘ I never

look at his paintings now’, says Hare. But

something of that mood lingers in scenes

like From Here I can Still See the Stars, 2020,

Balcony, 2020


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It’s intriguing to see Hare move indoors in

the past two years, tackling odd compositions

like the lamp and tin against a grid of tiles, in

Still Life with Red, Yellow and Blue, or the the

Dutch-feeling Interior #2, 2020, with its blue

table and yellow door, its wobbly verticals set

off by the circle of the bowl, and the glimpse

of a deeper interior beyond.

Washing, 2020

Oil and acrylic on linen,

40x30cm

Interior #3, 2020

Acrylic on paper,

53x35cm

Untitled #5 2021, 2021


Still Life With Red,

Yellow and Blue, 2020


Interior #2, 2020


In Interior #1, 2020, A family group falls

into an effortlessly ‘natural’ composition

against a pale, tawny, background, as they

watch the television in the corner. A bookcase

with its old soft, red-covered novels and small

painting above, a symphony of delicate tones,

suggests a history of family readers. In the

lovely Washing, 2020, the different clothes

sing out against the blue background,

a tapestry of family life. There is a serious

playfulness here, a delight in things found

and known, with a willingness to let the act

of painting itself dictate the form and mood.

The appeal of Fergus Hare’s painting lies

in this, in making the apparently familiar

appear afresh, from the moon and the evening

light, from the blanketing snow to the

multi-coloured washing in the kitchen.

This is a world that we share, transformed

through an artist’s eye and skill.

Notes

1. Gablik, S. (1991) The Reenchantment of Art

(New York and London: Thames and Hudson)

2. Ibid, p.19

3. Ibid, p.22

4. Ibid, p.42

Interior #1, 2020



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Work

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Pebbles, 2002

Pencil on paper, 10x20cm


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Dad in Bed #2, 2002

Charcoal and pencil on paper 20x10cm


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Flock, 2013



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Untitled Portrait, 2013



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Satellite, Morning, 2015

20x30cm

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We Live, We Die, 2015


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The Dish at Jodrell Bank, 2016

Charcoal on paper, 50x75cm


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Baikonur Cosmodrome, 2018

Mixed media 39x52cm

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Turbine, 2018


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Tiny Dots Of Light (Version #2), 2019



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Garden of Reality, 2019


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Untitled Mountains, 2019


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Mountains and Lakes, 2019



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The Pink House, 2019


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Untitled Landscape #1 2020, 2020


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Mountains #1, 2020


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Mountains #6, 2020

Watercolour on paper, 27x38cm

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Mountains #9, 2020



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Mountains #10, 2020

watercolour on paper, 27x38cm


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Mountains #11, 2020



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Landscape 2020, 2020


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Evening #1, 2020


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Evening #2, 2020


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Evening #3, 2020


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Garden Gate, 2020


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Wall Art, 2020


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Untitled #1 2020, 2020


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Untitled #2 2020, 2020


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Untitled #3 2020, 2020


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Crowd #1, 2020

Acrylic on linen 60x80cm

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Crowd #2, 2020

Acrylic on linen 60x80cm

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Crowd #3, 2020



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Snow Scene #1, 2020


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Snow Scene #3, 2020


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Snow Scene #4, 2020


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Snow Scene #5, 2020


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Interior #1, 2020



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Interior #2, 2020


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Interior #3, 2020


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Untitled #3 2021, 2021


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Untitled Landscape #2 2021, 2021


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Snow Scene #7, 2020



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Meat, Fish, Drink, 2021


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This publication is funded

by New Art Projects

newartprojects.com

New Art Projects

Fred Mann

Tim Hutchinson

Designed by

CHK Design

chkdesign.com

All works by Fergus Hare

and remain his copyright

6D Sheep Lane

London E8 4QS

info@newartprojects.com

+44 (0)20 7249 4032

ISBN 978-1-8380514-3-3

NEW

ART

PROJECTS

04 NAP_Fergus Hare_YUMPU

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