CALLUM INNES | EXPOSED PAINTING INTENSE BLACK

Frith Street Gallery, London

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003

“The paintings of Callum Innes have a remarkable emotive presence. As objects they are charged with an intense energy; as images they are startingly minimal and devoid of elaboration. Seeming to lack intent upon us, depicting nothing, inexpressive, they have nevertheless a powerful effect. Their quietly insistent claim upon the attention doesn’t elicit word so much as contemplative silence. The spectator is confronted as if by some beautiful or mysterious natural phenomenon: brilliant lights ascending in a dense night sky; soft rock, wind-scarred or stained by mineral-bearing water; random organic deposits. Such associations are not merely fanciful, though the paintings are in no way depictive of such things. The procedures by which they are made, which involve processes of dripping and pouring, staining, dissolving, eroding are indeed similar to the natural processes by which the earth and sky are marked in ceaseless variegations, which are unpredictable but familiar.”

- Mel Gooding, “A Poet of Common Sense”, Callum Innes: Paintings and works on paper at the ICA, London, UK, 1992