GALLERY

4' x 8' October 2024

 

John Marshall’s nude of TOSH "Morning Radiance" is imposing in scale, frank in its depictions, and the art of allusion.

 

"Morning Radiance" is a ‘real woman’. Sensual, confident and depicted with natural body curves. TOSH is almost portrayed as anonymous but with distinct characteristics, graceful, smooth and continuous curves and provocative seduction. John has captured his friend, with her unique personality and beauty.

 

The "Morning Radiance" background is loosely painted with gestural brushwork. This suggests that the artist has deliberately added the arabesques curlicues and other flourishes that enliven the setting. This nude painting has a patterned light rose-ochre skin, white pillow and faint sheets which suggests a specific studio set-up, as in Modigliani or Botticelli.

 

The contrast between the brushy backgrounds and the precisely delineated outlines of figurative details, distinguishes John Marshall’s painting from those of his previous work.

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"Morning Radiance" was composed on a white primed canvas, offering a light-reflecting ground, which imbued increasingly thin paint layers providing a distinct reflection of light. The painting reveals an opaque horizontal pattern that appears as wide sweeping strokes across the canvas in the natural flow of the body.

 

John began the painting with quickly applied gestural marks that established the slope of the model’s back, positioned the legs under the sheets, the right arm tucked in, and minimally marked the figure’s facial features. The soft shadowing of the shoulder to the disappearing right arm was first positioned further away from the model’s body; it was ultimately brought closer to the torso in later painting stages to highlight the exquisite curve of the frame.

 

The form of the nude was sketched with fine diluted black painted lines, followed by further reiteration of the contours in black and ochre tones. Using a fine brush to draw the form and composition of Tosh in diluted ochre paint on the canvas before applying colour,

 

John began by ghosting his drawing, in much the same way as he develops his pencil sketches. Sometimes controlled or sensitive, sometimes violent and harsh, depending on the way he felt about adding 'Joie de vivre".

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Two distinctive and complementary effects to reinforce the contours of the torso in his "Morning Radiance", created almost nonexistent shadows in or around the buttocks, while the beautiful curve of the skin accentuates the vibrancy of the rose, yellow ochre flesh which formed bare reserved areas and soft coloured strokes, with a rose and yellow ochre ground.

 

Large areas of lightly painted coloured ground are used to create curvature and describe features around the spine. John had a clear sense of his composition before he began work and deliberately used a zinc white ground layer to make the white fabric of the sheets appear brighter and accentuate the ripples. Juxtapositions of the red/black background with natural realism of the flesh – is also evident in Tosh’s "Morning Radiance", highlights the contours of the face, hair, neck, shadows and the intergluteal cleft.

 

"Morning Radiance" ranges from thin strokes to a wider, impasto reinforcement of the contour. The thicker build-up of paint at the base of the figure is clearly visible and a severe heavy rose and black shadow background evolves around the thinly painted pillow. Dabs of an impasto paint were applied with a bristle brush, following the upper contour of the clouded background, creating a border to the beautifully lined anatomy.

 

The painting reveals Marshall’s abundance of bristle brush application as well as the polished areas of the structure. A thick brushstroke of a red-black colour follows the long edge of the model’s body as it softly winds, curves and meanders along the bed sheet, causing faint moguls and ruffles to break the surface.

 

TOSH "Morning Radiance", a radiant body that dazzles in luminosity, represents the first stage John Marshall's expansion into human realism. With growing confidence and in line with a constant cycle of inspiration, he has mastered the magical use of oils to capture the spirit of the subject and reaffirms the role of his artistic development .