RS (Steve) Mitchell, Time Lapse (2011) Exhibition Catalogue

R S Mitchell

Mitchell Brochure.indd 1 28/10/2011 16:52


Can nature, in all her relentless and unforgiving power, be harnessed by the technologies of mankind? R.S. Mitchell is fascinated with this fundamental question and it lurks behind his hyper-real work. His paintings of the lighthouses and barriers man builds to protect against the onslaught of wind and sea, as well as his panoramic paintings in Time Lapse, make this interest apparent.

Replicating the world through images is mankind’s way of making it palatable and harmless. As anyone who has ever remembered a childhood moment through photographs knows, the mind absorbs images more readily than it does knowledge of things themselves, and art is in direct competition with reality in our psychology. Can the created image become a replacement for the harsh world?

In this exhibition, Mitchell examines the potential for man to capture nature’s image. He seems to suggest that doing so might offer the ultimate way of harnessing our unruly environment. Possessing an incredible understanding of perspective, illusion, lens-optics, and sophisticated digital programs, he is interested in how a panorama’s vastness and a horizon’s depth can be grasped, made compact, and fitted onto a sheet of canvas. And through images he also shows that even the most exotic and hostile wildernesses of the world – such as the Negev desert or the ‘Remarkables’ mountain range in New Zealand, which feature in his works – can feel welcoming to human beings. Mitchell’s cinematic work seems able to capture the awe-inspiring natural world in attractive high-definition.

Mitchell’s background is an impressive career as a scenic painter for some of the biggest Hollywood movies, in which he creates copies of incredible environments where it would be impossible to film. He has painted a forty-foot high backdrop of a desert, and the Heathrow Airport as it appears in Love Actually. Once integrated into the movie, these painted copies become as real as the actors themselves.

By contrast, in his fine art, Mitchell playfully lays bare the apparatus with which images are made, emphasising how much we are usually willing to accept as reality. In Scenics (2011), the presence of two scenic painters provokes the question of whether the cityscape behind them is real or painted; the right side of the image provides a clue as the canvas appears to peel away from itself. In Second Unit (2010), a sophisticated camera surveys the scene, leading the beholder eventually to notice the deliberate ambiguity as to whether the view behind the cameramen and the rubble on which they stand is supposed to be ‘real’ or painted scenery.

In works from 2009, such as Clearing Storm, St Mary’s, Mitchell explored man’s struggle to survive in the hostile environment of England’s coastline, painting the ancient Bamburgh Castle and modern lighthouses. He views these both as forms of technology developed through human history to defend against the natural elements. Yet Mitchell’s exploration in this exhibition of painting as a means of defence against an indifferent and brutal universe proves that man’s greatest tools are as old as art itself.

Lucy WhelanOctober 2011


Nodal Point, 2010Oil on linen115cm x 315cm


Time Lapse, 2011Oil on linen

115cm x 315cm


Scenics, 2011Oil on linen115cm x 315cm


I Looked Up, It Vanished on the Air, 2011Oil on linen

155cm x 110cm


Second Unit, 2010Oil on linen107cm x 285cm


Still, They Search, 2010Oil on linen

107cm x 285cm


Causeway, 2011Oil on linen66cm x 163cm


Pilgrim’s Way, 2011Oil on linen

66cm x 163cm


Souter, 2009Oil on linen87cm x 290cm


Clearing Storm, St Mary’s, 2009Oil on linen

130cm x 200cm


Bamburgh Castle, 2009Oil on linen122cm x 200cm


The day before seeing Steve Mitchell’s paintings at his studio, I had been to the Royal Academy to see the exhibition Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement. Witnessing Degas, an artist so inspired by photography and the movies, I said to myself “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a contemporary Degas! An artist, classically trained and vibrant in palette, but who structures compositions in a photographic format to present a truly modern view of the world...”

I’ve found him.

As I stand in front of Mitchell’s cinematic canvases, I feel part of the action with the scene moving all around me and I am engrossed. Just as a good film pulls you in and grabs you, so does Mitchell’s all-encompassing, cinemascopic, frieze-like framing transport me to a different world: a world where huge breath-taking views become gargantuan awe-inspiring canvases. I can almost smell the popcorn.

Estelle LovattOctober, 2011

Estelle is a freelance art critic who has appeared on BBC Radio 2’s ‘The Arts Show’ and various independent radio stations, and written for publications such as Art of England magazine.

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Left: RS (Steve) Mitchell, with his daughter Rosalyn, before Nodal Point, which features her as the subject. Right: Works hanging in Celia Lendis Contemporary gallery, October 2011.


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Documents

RS (Steve) Mitchell, Time Lapse (2011) Exhibition Catalogue