A TOWER? OR A PAINTBRUSH? | TREVOR BELL

When the abstract painter Trevor Bell died in 2017, many mourned the passing of ‘the last of the St Ives Modernists’.

Untitled, 1980. Gouache on paper, courtesy of Alan Wheatley Art

Bell moved to the Cornish village in 1955, on the suggestion of Terry Frost, and spent five extremely productive years working alongside the likes of Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth and Patrick Heron, developing a powerful personal style of colourful abstraction painted onto large-scale canvases. He quickly earned himself a national, and indeed international, reputation.

But it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole him as simply being part of that famous Cornish school. In fact, when he was later questioned about his early paintings, he would reply: “Oh that's a pity, I don’t make those anymore”.

He moved back to his hometown of Leeds in 1960, subsequently spending periods in Winchester and the United States, where he taught and painted for 20 years, before moving back to Cornwall – near Penzance – in 1997. In those six decades he continued to experiment with and develop his style, working prodigiously until his death, after a short illness, aged 87. He enjoyed a major retrospective in Tate St Ives in 2004… and there was plenty more to come.

As Joseph Clarke of St Ives gallery Anima Mundi put it in his obituary: ‘[Bell was] capable of capturing and distilling nature’s physical and metaphysical complexity with a graceful rawness and often profound simplicity.’

You can see all that in this simple gouache sketch from 1980, a recent acquisition by the Alan Wheatley Gallery. In very few brushstrokes, Bell achieved a work of tonal complexity, with varying shades of green and cream, blue, pink and putty, encouraging the viewer’s eye on a journey up the centre of the plane. Does the image represent a tower rising into the heavens? A paintbrush in the act of creation? Perhaps it is both at the same time.

Alan Wheatley is also showing new acquisitions by the likes of Alan Davie, Paul Feiler, Brian Wynter, Denis Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Barbara Hepworth, and Julian Opie. There’s also a beautiful 1967 abstract from Bell’s friend Patrick Heron – 3 Reds – which we will feature in this space later this winter.

Alan Wheatley Art