LECTURES / THE ARTS SOCIETY

On this page you will find a brief outline of the lectures I am offering for the Arts Society, arts festivals, etc. The lectures listed below can be combined or extended to create a Study Day; just get in touch and we can discuss what you need. I am sometimes available at short notice, so if you have a cancellation I may be able to help. For further information, Arts Society members can look me up on the Directory. Otherwise, please get in touch via the email on my Profile page.  

As well as lecturing for The Arts Society, I give illustrated talks and run study days for museums, arts organisations and festivals including the V&A, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Pallant House, Towner, Royal Watercolour Society, Hastings Contemporary, Leeds Art Gallery, National Maritime Museum, Nottingham Contemporary, RWA Bristol, Hatchards, Blenheim Literature Festival, The Art Fund, Salisbury Museum, Ways with Words & Canterbury Festival.

  

TIRZAH GARWOOD: BEYOND RAVILIOUS

Tirzah Garwood, Hornet and Wild Rose, 1950 (Towner)

A moving, beautifully-illustrated lecture exploring the life and work of Tirzah Garwood (1908-51), based on my upcoming exhibition Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious. The name of Eric Ravilious has become familiar over the past decade, but few people are aware that his wife, Tirzah Garwood (1908-51), was a talented and original artist in her own right. This is about to change, with my exhibition devoted to this remarkable figure opening at Dulwich Picture Gallery in November 2024 (it runs until May 2025). A witty observer of the human condition, the youthful Garwood became established as a wood engraver of rare ability. After marrying Ravilious and becoming a devoted mother to three children, she took up paper marbling, quickly achieving renown for the dazzling originality of her decorative papers. In her early 30s she suffered the double blow of a grave breast cancer diagnosis and her husband's death on active service in World War 2. Undaunted, she remarried and took up oil painting, producing in a few short years a series of strange, beautiful paintings. Until now, few of these have been seen outside the family. Visitors to Dulwich are in for a treat - and so is anyone who comes to this lecture! 

 

SEAFARING: ART & LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

Mary Adshead, The Cruise, 1934, Tate

Based on my critically-acclaimed 2022 exhibition at Hastings Contemporary, Seafaring brings to life the perils and pleasures of life at sea, with stunning artworks by Turner, Gericault, Tissot, John Everett, Ravilious, Ronald Searle and many more. British artists have always been fascinated by the maritime world, but in the age of Turner and Gericault attention shifted to the experience of sailors and travellers. At first the emphasis was on disaster, but soon we begin to see more nuanced depictions of ocean travel, such as Ford Madox Brown's The Last of England. With the 20th century came opportunities for artists to portray life aboard battleships, ocean liners, submarines and fishing trawlers. Alternating between drama and serenity, tragedy and laughter, and featuring works by a star-studded cast of artists, this lecture brings to life a fascinating story.

 

SEASIDE MODERN: ART AND LIFE ON THE BEACH

Take a trip to the seaside with the curator of the much-loved exhibition Seaside Modern (Hastings Contemporary 2021) in an exhibition exploring the art and social history of the British beach. During the first half of the 20th century something amazing happened to the beaches of Britain: they became glamourous. Men and women swapped fusty Victorian garments for daring swimsuits as 19th century prudery gave way to 20th century exhibitionism. The beach became a major source of inspiration for artists, not only those like the Newlyn painters whose focus was the human form, but also more experimental painters and sculptors. While Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth responded to the sculptural qualities of objects found on the beach, Paul Nash and Eileen Agar revelled in the strangeness of the seashore. Seaside Modern is an exuberant, wide-ranging lecture that casts a fresh eye over a period of remarkable artistic and social change. Featuring paintings, sculpture and works on paper by the most famous artists of the period, as well as posters and archive photography, Seaside Modern makes an important contribution to our understanding of the period’s cultural and social history. The lecture is based on the exhibition of the same name I curated at Hastings Contemporary in 2021, and I touch on the sometimes fraught and occasionally hilarious business of curating exhibitions like this. 

 

EDWARD BAWDEN: ARTIST & ADVENTURER

Edward Bawden, The Gnat and the Lion (Aesop's Fables), 1970

In a long and illustrious career Edward Bawden (1903-89) achieved renown as a painter, designer, illustrator and teacher, yet he remains an elusive figure. Today he is remembered for his spectacular linocuts and humorous illustrations, yet he was once feted as an innovative modern painter. During the 1930s he barely left his home in Great Bardfield, Essex, but in 1940 embarked on a remarkable career as a war artist, travelling solo around the Middle East. Post-war he made prints on an epic scale while illustrating numerous books with his habitual skill and humour, and today he is seen as a key 20th century figure by artists like Mark Hearld and Emily Sutton. As curator of the 2018 Bawden exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, I draw on in-depth research, archive material and more. 

 

ERIC RAVILIOUS: ART & LIFE 

Eric Ravilious, Beachy Head, 1939

A vivid portrait of enigmatic artist Eric Ravilious (1903-42) by the curator of the blockbuster 2015 exhibition Ravilious (Dulwich Picture Gallery), and author of Ravilious in Pictures (Mainstone Press 2009-12). Eric Ravilious was only 39 when he died on active service as a war artist in 1942, yet he had already achieved amazing things. A brilliant wood engraver and designer, he is best known today for his haunting watercolours in which lighthouses, white horses and empty rooms become marvels. Having written numerous books on the artist and curated several exhibitions, I can offer vivid insights into the life and work of this playful, enigmatic artist, while exploring in depth his achievements in watercolour, wood engraving, lithography and ceramics. The paintings are a delight, the Ravilious story funny, sad and full of surprises.(S)

PAUL NASH: A LIFE IN PICTURES

Paul Nash, Events on the Downs, 1933

Based on my book Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream, this lecture tells the story of Paul Nash's life through a selection of his finest paintings, supported by photographs and other material. From his own writing we learn that Nash was witty, playful and passionate. Investigating paintings like 'Event on the Downs' we discover a world of love and struggle and realise that he was both clever and emotionally driven. A war artist in both World Wars, Nash defied chronic illness to paint until the last day of his life.

PAUL AND JOHN NASH: BROTHERS IN ART

Paul and John Nash, exhibition poster 1913

Growing up together in the shadow of their mother's illness, Paul and John Nash emerged as artists at the same time, exhibiting their work in a joint exhibition in 1913. The following year they both enlisted in the Artists' Rifles, and both served on the Western Front before working together as war artists. Both subsequently explored wood engraving and book illustration, but otherwise their art moved in different directions and, while remaining close, they each sought to distance themselves from the tag of 'the Nash brothers'. It could be the plot of a novel, but every word of this intriguing, personal story of brotherly love, strife and competition is true!


  EDWARD SEAGO: FROM THE CIRCUS TO SANDRINGHAM

Edward Seago, The Anvil Cloud, c1940s

Like LS Lowry, Seago was immensely popular but disdained by critics; today the best of his landscapes look fantastic, while his life story is full of interest. A prolific author, he overcame childhood illness before running away with the circus. He also mixed in aristocratic circles, making friends among the Royal family; a colourful wartime career and a trip to Antarctica aboard the Royal Yacht add to this fascinating account. Seago is much loved by artists, and here we explore a number of his finest paintings in detail. The research for this lecture comes from my 2014 monograph on Seago, published by Lund Humphries.

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE AND NEW MEXICO

Georgia O'Keeffe, Jimson Weed, 1936

A vibrant lecture exploring the life and work of the great 20th century American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, focusing particularly on her long and fruitful relationship with New Mexico, a US state the lecturer knows well. This colourful lecture explores the relationship between an extraordinary American painter and an equally remarkable place: the picturesque state of New Mexico. Born in rural Winsconsin in the 1880s, O'Keeffe gravitated to New York, where she made her name in the 1920s with the captivating flower paintings that remain her best-known works. She always had a hankering for the vast empty spaces of the West, however, having worked as a teacher in Canyon, Texas, before her rise to fame, she found her way to the mountain art colony of Taos, New Mexico, in 1929. Fascinated by the mountains and desert, adobe churches and sun-bleached bones, and above all by the brilliant light and vast skies of the state they call the Land of Enchantment, O’Keeffe painted constantly. She was a fearless explorer, setting off alone into the empty landscape in a battered old car, and a tremendous character. Drawing on twenty years’ personal experience of New Mexico and an archive of personal photographs and reminiscences, this lecture brings to life one of America’s greatest artists, and one of its most beautiful places.


ART AND LIFE IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Explore the unique history and culture of Santa Fe and northern New Mexico with a guide who has been visiting regularly for 25 years and at one time sold paintings on the city's legendary Canyon Road. This colourful lecture is based on two decades’ personal experience of a unique art colony. Nowhere else in the USA have Native American, Spanish and Anglo cultures grown side by side as they have here, and this diversity, along with the glorious light of the high desert, has attracted artists since the early days of the railroad. The history of this still-thriving colony is rich, strange and full of remarkable characters, including British visitors like DH Lawrence and famous American artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe. Having spent five years selling art on the city’s Canyon Road – think Bond Street with cowboy hats – I can offer an intimate picture of Santa Fe: it’s inspiring, funny and occasionally scandalous.


LAUGHTER AND LOSS: BRITISH WAR ARTISTS OF WORLD WAR TWO 

Edward Ardizzone, Out of Bounds, 1940

Explore the remarkable achievements of Britain's official war artists (Laura Knight, Paul Nash, Richard Eurich, Edward Ardizzone, etc) with a lecturer who has curated major exhibitions on two of them: Eric Ravilious (1903-42) and Edward Bawden (1903-89). When Kenneth Clark set up the War Artists scheme in 1939 he hoped to employ British artists and keep them safe. In this wide-ranging lecture we follow the fortunes of those chosen, from Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Edward Ardizzone to Laura Knight and Richard Eurich. We will see how the experience of war inspired different artists, examine some of the striking artworks created during the conflict, and commemorate the lives of those who did not come home. This lecture can be amended (or expanded as a study day) to compare the experience of artists in World War One and Two - just let me know!




'Thank  you so much for coming to talk to us at Sidmouth last week.  Several people have remarked on how interesting they found your lecture about a painter  they hadn't known about before, and felt that  that is just "what NADFAS is all about".  It certainly made me want to go to your exhibition at Dulwich later on.  Thank you for such an interesting morning.' Elisabeth Neather, Sidmouth DFAS

‘Thank you so much for a wonderful day on Saturday... We have had lots of positive feedback.’ Jo Banham, Victoria and Albert Museum

'Thank you for your wonderful illustrated lecture at the Bankside Gallery on Thursday.' Isla Hackney, Royal Watercolour Society

‘Vigorous applause from a packed audience was evidence enough of the calibre of the museum lecture last Thursday by James Russell…’ Wiltshire Gazette & Herald

‘Alfriston put yet more gloss on its artistic credentials with a sell-out talk celebrating the work of Eric Ravilious.’ Sussex Express

‘Thank you for such a great talk on Saturday, and for signing the books. People thoroughly enjoyed it and we've had great feedback...’ Sara Cooper, Towner Gallery

‘Thanks again for the talk, it was a great start to our proposed autumn series of lectures.’ David Oelman, Fry Art Gallery

‘Like many other people, apparently, I could have gone on listening to you for a lot longer! Thank you so much for making the effort to come all this way.’ Catherine Bingham, Rye Arts Festival