Oil & Dirt Works by Clive and Virginia Pates

Oil & Dirt This catalog, and many of the artworks within, were funded in part by grants from the Claudia Mitchell Arts Fund of the Rappahannock Association for Arts and Community in Rappahannock County, Virginia, and creat-ed for an exhibition at the R. F. Ballard Gallery in Washington, Virginia. The artists also wish to give many thanks for the support of Richard Scott and the Artistic Alliance in County Cork, Ireland, and of the Rancho Linda Vista arts community in Oracle, Arizona.

Clive and Virginia Pates create paintings and ceramics that relate on many levels, such as the source material of a common landscape and a richness of color and abstract form. Clive Pates’ paintings are a plein air record of the couple’s life and travels, and Virginia Pates’ ceramics are constructed of the materials that created these landscapes.

Clive Pates is a gesturalist painter, unsentimentally representing his subject with brush and knife work and sculpturally describing the space of the landscape. A native of the United Kingdom, Clive has traveled and painted extended en plein air landscape in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy, Mexico, Mississippi, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia.

Virginia Pates is a contemporary American ceramic artist who creates wheel-thrown and altered forms in a wide variety of clay bodies, often including materials from the local environ-ment, and fired with handmade glazes in unusual colors and surfaces.

above and detail on cover:i. White Poplar| St. Benedict’s Priory, Cobh, Ireland | Oil on Linen | 85 x 70 centimeters| 2013

CW Pates: The Rhythm of Repetition

When in the creative mode, the artist (musician/painter) develops artistic fragments that they try and har-monize together to form a final composition they feel is pleasing to the senses, be they musical notes, or color tones from a brush. The end goal is usually an attempt to please the artist and their audience. It is my opinion the CW Pates scores very high in achieving both.

At first glance CW Pates’ work has the visual comfort of a good backbeat rhythm, familiar as the opening drums of a great song. One is quickly immersed into the fresh color and strong composition of shapes that form his (from life) landscapes into a satisfying magnum opus.

When a musician writes a new song, its evolution comes from repeated performances designed to hone the final product. Sometimes the initial composition changes radically in this feeling out process, becoming more complex and layered, other times the progress comes with simplifying the song or the painting by pairing away the superfluous details.

At the start of his excursion for generating a painting, Clive may wonder the countryside for days to find just the right clump of trees, intersecting ground, water and sky to stimulate his artistic muse. This view must cap-ture his senses completely to compel him to the visit the spot obsessively, to find a subject motivating enough to paint the view several times from the same angle or just a few feet to the left or right.

Each successful painting can be a revelation for the artist, a series of experiences that are recorded in paint. When trying to find a tranquil path to guide the viewer’s eye through the picture, the artist may note a brief transition of light that then can serve as a guidepost for a pleasing center of interest that is in turn supported by the initial compositional shapes. Building these elements may take many sittings, but Clive manages to make final painting emerge fresh and spontaneous, veiling from the viewer the struggle of the modifications of brushwork and color, that ultimately coalesces into the artist’s final finished sublime song.

William Wray

iv. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 28 inches | 2015

iii. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 29 inches | 2015

Clive William Pates: Paintings

The three years of change that brought us from Arizona and the South West were transformative in terms of a fresh understanding of my work. A culmination of years of working series of paintings, an ever-deepening cycle of thoughts about mark making, composition, and colour, makes for a slower process of understanding. The last desert landscapes, their emotional significance and the ability to give them some meaning, are only now coming into focus.

The landscape presents a natural structure that allows for multiple interpretation; each painting worked in se-ries and built up slowly over multiple painting sessions. This way of working is not intrinsically about creating more detail, but about the understanding and translation of an emotional dialogue between myself, the land-scape, and the picture surface.

I would describe myself as a ‘gesturalist painter’. The mark making process does not give away the illusion of detail, and does not give in lightly to inspection. I work mainly with painting knives to create a mixed surface impasto that is complex and multi-layered. The marks are left open and unhindered in their gestured abstrac-tion, with the point of focus a perceptual interpretation of the landscape.

The Arizona landscape focused the way I saw and interpreted my subject. The desert environment forced a way of looking, the landscape at one moment grey and bleached by sunlight, then saturated with colour by that same light, shadows dark and unworkable, then full of the richest hue. All this, and the brutal physicality of the sun moving across the subject, changed each colour and shadow moment by moment. More than ever, I had to fall back on an underlying perceptual insistence, where every mark is descriptive of the observed landscape. Each serial painting concentrated on brief minutes of light to find some sense in a hopeless reality of countless interpretations. Yet these paintings did not fall back on detail but became looser, the marks more open and abstract.

In practical terms, I wanted to build a series of paintings based on the reality before me, not confined by ref-erence points sourced from a historical dialogue on painting, nor limited by my own awkwardness and past work. The scale of colour from the deepest broken red to the lightest sap green should exist within a complete-ly democratic palette. Any sense of forced composition built on formal principals should give way to perceptu-al reality.

The point that it’s taken half a lifetime to gain any kind of workable perspective is marked by a deeper tran-sition in emotional understanding. Moving away from a tonal vision of the world, based on hierarchy and structure, to a way of looking based on emotional resonance. The content of the painting is taken from the relationship between the marks and not solely from traditional ideas of representation. The fact that the works are not abstract, but take their meaning from an abstract expressionist process, is important. The works are not engaging with abstraction, but emerging from a twentieth century process of experimentation and a renewed focus on perception, bridging the last hundred years to a small beginning in the plein-air genre.

Accotink Creek - Disheveled

English porcelain with raw, Irish linen fiber and inclusions of natural clay from Accotink Creek in Fairfax County, Vir-ginia; wheel-thrown and altered; oxida-tion fired to cone 6; 7” x 11” x 11”; 2013.

Virginia Rood Pates: Ceramics

The material of clay and the form of a cylinder have been the basis of my studies for the past 20 years. Howev-er simple the concept, I have never become distracted from making these forms because I discover in each pot a new challenge and a new experiment in an ongoing process of distorting clay.

My working process is influenced by the scientific method, and I use patterns of controls and variables. The control is a wheel-thrown cylinder of clay, and everything else is variable, including me. I use many different clay bodies, from translucent porcelains mixed and made by hand from my own recipes to dirty, recycled clay. I often load the clay with fiber, minerals, and natural clays, which change further the nature of the clay.

Each time I make a pot I am looking and feeling for the balance between distortion and symmetry. Foreign materials in the clay magnify the challenge of creating wheel-thrown forms because they urge the clay to warp and collapse. This deliberate difficulty focuses my abilities, forcing me to always work at the limit of my craft, refining the edges of what’s possible, and recovering balance from chaos.

After the clay is formed on the wheel, the pots are dried and fired on stoneware formers to allow the materi-als within the clay body to shift and coagulate. This refines the pot’s shape and center of gravity continually through the drying process, and then again when the ceramic reaches plasticity during the hottest part of the kiln firing.

I make all the glazes I use by hand from raw materials. I use complements of color and texture to reinforce and echo the balance of contrasts in the original clay form. Firing completes the process, and I use many different temperatures and atmospheres of kilns, sometimes on the same pot. In the same way that I am always looking for new raw materials to add to the clay, I also experiment with glazes and firings as a way to further the dia-logue within each piece of work.

i. Cultural Park Study | Sedona, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 24 x 24 inches | 2011

ii. Cultural Park Study | Sedona, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 24 x 24 inches | 2011

Verde Dirt

Grolleg porcelain with human hair and inclusions of clay collected from the Mogollon Rim above Sedona, Arizona, and black arroyo sand collected from Rancho Linda Vista in Oracle, Arizona, on a base of Russian River Red stoneware with 35m mullite and dirt collected from Jerome and Clarkdale, Arizona; wheel-thrown and altered; 6 x 6 x 6 inches; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2009.

Clarkdale Brick

Grolleg porcelain with inclusions of natural clay from the historic brick mine on the Verde River in Clarkdale, Arizona; wheel-thrown and altered;

8 x 7 x 7 inches; fired to cone 6 Oxidation, 2011.

i. From Bird Heaven | Oak Creek at Page Springs, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 30 x 36 inches | 2009

ii. From Bird Heaven | Oak Creek at Page Springs, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 28 x 28 inches | 2009

Rio Verde

Recycled, white stoneware with inclusions of Verde River gravel from the Verde Valley Campus of Yavapai College, Clarkdale, AZ; wheel-thrown and altered; 7 x 5 x 5 inches; soda fired to cone 6; 2011.

The Crumbling Edges of Jerome

Paper porcelain with inclusions of rotten brick collected from the central

steps of Jerome, Arizo-na; wheel-thrown and

altered; 12 x 7 x 7 inches; fired to cone 6 oxidation;

2012.

Sun:

At its best the light in the Irish landscape is bright and strong, flickering with shadows and the half thought expectancy of its undoing. For the plein-air landscape painter, the clarity of this light is only matched by the struggle to catch each mo-ment on canvas. Landscape painters can solve the problem of immediacy by working hard and fast, placing marks down in two’s and three’s that trip over themselves in random succession to describe that living moment.

My working method is slower, more an act of endurance. I extend the practice of plein-air with many hours and sessions painting on one canvas. This approach lets me watch the changing light as shadows move and sculpt the landscape. This gives the chance to understand the subtlety of each moment, the colour and moment itself as it is flanked by different points of time. With many hours in a painting, I don’t look for excessive detail in paint application but try to keep the picture surface open using larger, gestural mark-making. The point of the extended application is to capture a breadth and depth, as well as the transience.

It was with some sense of adventure that we boarded the flight at Dulles for the Cobh residency. Our recent move from Jerome, Arizona, to Washington, DC., had left our lives scattered over a year’s journey and 3000 miles. A two-month residency was another move that offered a chance to complete a series of paintings, and a return to Europe that was much anticipated.

Cobh greeted us with a certain introspection. The weather had closed in, not even a blurred hint of light from the light-house across the Cork Harbor. I had anticipated the weather. Working many years previously in Connemara had given me a love for the Irish landscape, and a healthy respect for the climate. But as an extended plein-air painter, my expectation were perhaps a little too high! I started on a portrait, part of a series of portraits of my wife, with a backup plan of still-life taken from found objects on the beach. Then the sun began to shine, first in stops and starts, casting annoying and frequent shadows from the sky light across my composition. I ventured out into the convent garden behind the house to start on a tentative landscape, which would certainly drive the sun away and clear up those irksome shadows from my portrait? The sun continued to shine, and shine. After six weeks of clear weather I completed the Cobh series of landscape with no compromise on time. So was there a certain clemency or mercy? Whatever the reason, I am grateful to Ireland for her patience. c. w. pates

The Deluge

Scarva Ming porcelain with raw Irish linen fiber and beach glass collected from the Holy Ground in Cobh, Ireland; thrown, altered and destroyed by natural events; 4 x 10 x 11 inches; oxidation fired to cone 10; 2013.

iii. Redbud: Grey to Black | St. Benedict’s Priory, Cobh, Ireland | Oil on Linen | 70 x 70 centimeters| 2013

Rain:

As we finished our Irish residency, the record-breaking summer of Irish sun was also ending. The rain returned, and the sudden deluge broke through the roof of the factory where I was working, pouring over my unfired pots, filling them with dirty water and gravel. Soaking in puddles of water should have completely dissolved the bone-dry porcelain, but I discovered them the next day as incredibly whole. The raw linen fiber I had added to the clay was holding it like a natural bandage, and the stoneware formers under the pots had allowed them to stiffen and dry again without collapsing. Unsure what would happen, I left unrepaired the fractures and muddy trails from the gutters and continued on with the firing process, salvaging the summer’s work. The pots were destroyed, but the pots were a success. v. pates

i. Crookbranch | Woodburn Park, Annandale, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 30 inches | 2014

ii. Crookbranch | Woodburn Park, Annandale, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 30 inches | 2014

The Lower Parking Lot

English porcelain with inclusions of micaceous red clay from the drain below the President’s Dining Room on the Annandale Cam-pus of Northern Virginia Community College; wheel-thrown and altered; 9 x 10 x 10 inches; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2014.

The Little CrackSoldate stoneware and English porcelain with inclusions of micaceous red clay from the ditch below the faculty parking lot on the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College; wheel-thrown

and altered; 5” x 12” x 12”; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2015.

(right)The Grimm’s Tennis Court

White stoneware with inclusions of red clay from Rapidan, VA; wheel-thrown and altered; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 5” x 12” x 12”; 2015.

vi. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 30 x 28 inches | 2015

vii. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 28 x 28 inches | 2015

Virginia Rood Pates: Ceramics education:

1999 Master of Fine Arts in Ceramic Art, Centre for Ceramic Studies, Cardiff School of Art, University of Wales, United Kingdom. 1995 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi.

selected exhibitions:

2015 Piedmont, Clive and Virginia Pates, R. H. Ballard Gallery, Washington, Virginia. In and of the Earth, Clive and Virginia Pates, Fisher Gallery, Schlesinger Center for the Arts, Alexandria, Virginia. Lively Experiments: NCECA Biennial, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI. Workhouse Clay National 2015, Workhouse Arts Center, Lorton, Virginia. New Ceramics in the Old Dominion: A Survey of Virginia Ceramics Faculty, DuPont Gallery, Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia.2014 From Oak Creek to the Accotink, Clive and Virginia Pates, Arts Center of Orange, Orange, Virginia.2013 Artistic Alliance: Pride 2013, Ballymaloe House, County Cork, Ireland. Virginia Clay Invitational, The Arts Center in Orange, Virginia. 2012 Ecumene: Global Interface in American Ceramics, International Academy of Ceramics, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Darkness and Light, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, AZ.2011 Virginia Pates: Verde Dirt, Gallery 527, Jerome, Arizona. All Arizona Clay, Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler, Arizona. 2010 From Bird Heaven, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, Arizona.2009 2009 Ceramics Biennial, Northern Arizona University Museum, Flagstaff, Arizona.2008 Traveling Dialogue (East), Clive and Virginia Pates, Meridian Community College, Meridian, MS. Traveling Dialogue (West), Clive and Virginia Pates, Yavapai College, Clarkdale, AZ. Domo Arigato: 2nd Annual Mississippi Clay Invitational, George Ohr Museum, Biloxi, MS.

residencies:

2013 Artistic Alliance Residency, National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Ireland.2012 Resident Artist, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.

awards and recognition:

2015 Claudia Mitchell Arts Fund Grant2015 Juried Member, Virginia State Center for Artisans2011 Merit Award for Ceramics, Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler, Arizona.2010 Yavapai College Institutional Grant for glaze research.2009 Arizona Commission on the Arts Teaching Artists Roster. 2008 Mississippi Arts Commission Mini-Grant for Travelling Dialogue catalogue.2006 Andy Warhol Foundation Grant. Mississippi Arts Commission Business Grant.

publications:

2015 Lively Experiments: 2015 NCECA Biennial, Catalog to the exhibition.2014 The Complete Guide to Mid-Range Glazes, by John Britt. (recipe and image contributor)2013 Artistic Alliance: Pride, Catalog to the exhibition.2012 Ecumene: Global Interface in American Ceramics, Catalog to the exhibition.2008 Traveling Dialogue, Catalog to the exhibition. (author)2004 Clive Pates, Plein Air Magazine. (author)

Clive William Pates: Paintings education:

1996 Post-Graduate Figurative Studies, Art Students League, New York, NY. 1995 British Fulbright Scholar in Figurative Art, MFA Program, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY.1993 Post-Graduate Diploma in Foundry and Drawing, University of the West of England, Bristol, England.1991 Bachelor of Fine Arts, First Class, University of the West of England, Bristol, England.

selected exhibitions:

2015 Piedmont, Clive and Virginia Pates, R. H. Ballard Gallery, Washington, Virginia. In and of the Earth, Clive and Virginia Pates, Fisher Gallery, Schlesinger Center for the Arts, Alexandria, Virginia.2014 From Oak Creek to the Accotink, Clive and Virginia Pates, Arts Center of Orange, Orange, Virginia. Clive Pates: Recent Paintings, Joie de Vivre Gallery, Cambridge, Maryland. 2014 Annual Exhibition, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland.2013 Artistic Alliance: Pride 2013, Ballymaloe House, County Cork, Ireland. 2012 Darkness and Light, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, AZ.2010 From Bird Heaven, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, Arizona. Traveling Dialogue (East), Clive and Virginia Pates, Meridian Community College, Meridian, MS. Traveling Dialogue (West), Clive and Virginia Pates, Yavapai College, Clarkdale, AZ.2007 The Will to Endure, George Ohr Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi. 2004 Clive Pates: Recent Paintings, Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi. Clive Pates: 20 Minutes of Light, Gallery 119, Jackson, Mississippi.2003 Clive Pates: From the Sea of Cortez to the Tombigbee River, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS. Clive Pates: The Light in August, Sylvia Schmidt Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana. Clive Pates: Portraits, Rood Contemporary Fine Art, Bristol, England. residencies:

2013 Artistic Alliance Residency, Cobh, Co. Cork, Ireland.2012, 2010, 2008 Resident Artist, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.2010 Resident Artist, Verrocchio Arts Centre, Casole D’Elsa, Siena, Italy.2001 Robert Fleming Residency, Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, Scotland.2000 Roundstone Open Arts Residency, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.2000 Resident Artist, Verrocchio Arts Centre, Casole D’Elsa, Siena, Italy.1999 Juliet Gomperts Tuscany Residency, Casolé d’Elsa, Siena, Italy.

awards and recognition:

2015 Claudia Mitchell Arts Fund Grant2010 Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi: Work Placed in Permanent Collection. Phippen Museum of Western Art, Prescott, Arizona: Work Placed in Permanent Collection.2009 Arizona Commission on the Arts Teaching Artists Roster.2008 Mississippi Arts Commission Mini-Grant for Travelling Dialogue catalogue.2006 Andy Warhol Foundation Grant. Mississippi Arts Commission Business Grant.2005 Mississippi Arts Commission / NEA Visual Arts Fellowship Grant.2004 Elected to the Mississippi Artists Roster.2002 Third Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.1999 Second Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.1996 First Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.1995 Fulbright Scholarship, MFA studies in Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art. Warhol Foundation Scholarship. Posey Foundation Scholarship.

Clive Pates has worked as a regional editor for Fine Art Connoisseur and Plein Air Magazine, and he is currently writing for the Artists Magazine. He paints, teaches and exhibits his work internationally.

The Loading Dock

English porcelain with Irish raw linen fiber and inclusions of red, micaceous clay collected from the temporary construction site beside the Ernst Building loading dock on the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College; wheel-thrown and altered; 7 x 10 x 10 inches; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2014.

www.clivepates.com

www.virginiapates.com

(back cover)

Small Spaceship

Recycled stoneware; wheel-thrown and altered;

5 x 7 x 7 inches; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2013.

$15.00