Hampstead School of Art

Alan Gouk Study Project- Summer Art School.
HSoA students are always inspired by our Patrons, HSoA summer Art School shone a special spotlight onto Alan Gouk 1939-2024. “Gouk builds with paint a colourful architecture, a physicality of form & a fluidity of surface textures that have inspired this series of young artists work, allowing them to build layers of personal meaning. Wonderful work lead by tutor Guy Sherman Altarace”. Isabel H Langtry, Principal HSoA



https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/alan-gouk-1196

Big Fair Day with all its activities, crafts , art and food stalls was a wonderful day for everyone! As a beneficiary Charity alongside Keats Community Library we shared what we do with the visitors, so much participation was a delight. Thanks so much to our sponsors.



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Alan Gouk 1939-2024. The first Hampstead School of Art Patron after Henry Moore. Many times exhibiter at Camden Art Centre & local lecturer.
On a hot summer day of the ’80s, I was on my way to a postgraduate interview- portfolio under my arm. I was a shy student from Hull University’s Faculty of Design Studies, travelling up in a scruffy lift to the fifth floor of the St Martins building on Charing Cross Road. With me were two unknown men, with very sculptural faces, very polite too.
When the lift hit the last floor, we got out. Me feeling lost, they chatting, said “follow us” & so it was that I arrived to Tim Scott’s office- brilliant head of sculpture, & learnt that the two men in the lift were, painter Alan Gouk & sculptor Sir Tony Caro.
Alan was was of the interviewers, hugely charismatic, deep set eyes under black bushy brows- reminded me of Brancusi’s observation of Picasso’s eyes being like “bullets coming at you”, these eagle eyes (Alans jumper tucked into his trousers) scrutinised every scrap of my portfolio, they referenced the wonders of Goya & Julio Gonzales, he clocked my Spanish heritage almost immediately, then sent me straight into the studio saying “now we’ll find out if you’re the right student for us”. Unknown students were busy at work, I joined them, a baptism of fire, I was added to the fold. Over the next 3 years of my post grad training (luxury in todays educational setting) Alan became the intelectual guide, the injector of deep knowledge, critical observation & standards. He also became my friend, his family part of mine. Constantly challenging my intellect, stretching my understanding & ambition. Alan joined us at the carving school- supported by the British Council,  in Slovenia, set up by Francisco Gazitua (also patron of HSoA) who introduced a fundamental skills based knowledge into St Martins from which many of us were able to create international sculptural careers. Alan carved & forged along with the rest of us! .…………..

Alan Gouk Patron HSoA 1939-2024
“I am sad to hear about the death of Alan Gouk. I met Alan whilst working at Hampstead School of Art, where he was a patron. A humanist at heart, his passion and dedication for painting, and search for a deeper meaning made him thrilling company.
I had the pleasure of helping him collate his 20th century painting lecture series, and it was clear his seriousness, and articulation of Art History was something rare. He was forever frustrated at the digital reproduction of paintings, and this was rooted in his exacting knowledge of colour.
Something of course, which is undeniable in his own work. During the lecture Alan broke down when reading a poem, I cannot remember who by, perhaps Apollinare, and this more than anything, demonstrated a connection that cannot be replicated in words. His paintings are an embodiment that to live, you need to see, to experience, to do, and even then you will be searching for that elusive something”.
darbyshire -Head of Foundation 2017-2022
RIP Alan, it was thrilling to share time with you.

Sunday is Art Fair Day part of the
season & a very important fundraiser for the HSoA Charity.
Art works & crafts on exhibition, food refreshments available 12-5pm opened by Jama Elmi Londons Best Dressed Man come and celebrate Prizes at 4pm
To book tickets for one of the performances of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” to secure your place at the Art Competition “Picture the Heath,” or to check the event’s program, please visit our website.
https://www.hampsteadsummerfestival.com/ .elmi.98

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Chinese Brush Painting every week with Xiaolan Gu

Brilliant artworks made by young artists during HSoA Half Term Art School 👏👏👏well done team.

Self Portrait by Kitty
Accepted “Congratulations, this artwork has been selected for both the online exhibition & the display at the Royal Academy!”
From Kitty’s parent “The self-portrait Kitty painted while she was with you has been accepted into the Royal Academy Young Artists’ Summer show, & will hang in the Academy this year! She could not have done it without the instruction & support of HSoA - so many thanks”.
HSoA young artist’s make rapid progress producing ambitious insightful work, well done young artists & special congratulations to Kitty 👏👏.

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Hsoa Gallery london

Sir Anthony Caro (1924–2013), is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s most influential sculptors, he was a Hampstead artist as was his wife Lady Sheila Girling a brilliant painter. He is the subject of Pitzhanger Manor spring exhibition, which opened on what would have been his 99th birthday. “There is something radical, strange & enigmatic about [Caro’s] heavy works, & in the setting of architect Sir John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor in west London, they simultaneously shine, intrigue & bear down on the building.” Edwin Heathcote- Financial Times.
“He was my tutor at St Martins School of Art, I wrote his obituary for the Camden New Journal which retold our first meeting & his great approach to teaching sculpture. HSoA patrons Alan Gouk, Francisco Gazitua, Dolorosa Sinaga, worked with him at St Martins School of Art Sir Frank Bowling also knew him well. We miss him” Isabel H Langtry, Principal HSoA.

'Forbidden Gardens' an exhibition by Baroque Anarchist. “The vitality & culture inherent within the work is palpable, a prolific & irrepressible precence, luscious paintings of gigantic flowers, skulls- sticks and stones, the flotsam & jetsam of nature in luxuriously painted compositions. A highly personal baroque style, intriguingly peppered with these elements of self reference hidden amongst the magnetic beauty.The classic definition of the Baroque comes to us from the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, whose “Principles of Art History” (1915) distinguished it from the earlier High Renaissance through a series of visual contrasts, “Renaissance pictures are “linear,” each figure outlined & balanced within the picture plane; Baroque pictures are “painterly.” The work resonates with this description. A number of these artworks have that same dynamism with a particular & heightened visual contrast, sometimes a composition of undulating velvety reds & luscious blacks, they are as much a temperament as a style, theatrically colliding the visual with the emotional. Scaled up into wonderful dreamy forests, connecting extremes of light & shadow in one painting. Playing with visual illusions, creating rhythms that disrupts our expectations of logic, a botanic architecture which flows. Brilliant.These grand painted works are both decorative and somehow structural. Lusciously described, going beyond the obvious, using references to the classical approach in a refreshing personal way which brings back the century’s old tradition of Baroque art & so with this reinvention able to reflect & depict elements of our contrary times
Intriguing titles such as ‘Thyroid Nest’ & references to the botanical intimacies of Georgia O’Keeffe, thematic yet somehow free, making skilled references beyond the formal echoes of light & shadow across classical themes of mythology, reinvented with elements of graffiti within compositions that underpin this very personal pondering. 
This is exciting work and a much-needed tonic with its breath-taking realism, symbolic elements, and universal beauty”
Isabel H Langtry Principal. Accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue.

A wonderful exhibition at HSoA Gallery!

Professional Artist Tedi Lena is currently exhibiting at Hampstead School of Art.
Tedi is an alumnus of Blanche Nevile School and a role model to the upcoming artists and designers at BNS.

Karin Schamroth, who was Tedi's Speech and Language Therapist when he was a student at Blanche Nevile, attended the prestigious opening night of the exhibition and kindly sent us these photographs.

The exhibition is on until February 12th and is open to visitors, do go and visit if you can.
Hampstead School of Art, NW3 7BF
https://www.hampstead-school-of-art.org/news/hsoa-gallery-reunion-exhibition-2023​

Congratulations Tedi!
Hampstead School of Art

Great to see 👍🏽

Another of my ceramic experiments at Hampstead School of Art under the great tutorship of Joely Clinkard - a star covered box. This one didn’t fall apart! Looks a bit like gingerbread… 😋

Ice sculpture by Francisco Gazitua Patron of HSoA. Gazitua cuts & builds in the white on white environment of Antartica where there are no native peoples, making Gazitua’s ice sculptures amongst the rarest of human sculptural interventions! As in much of his work he is driven by aesthetics derived from seeing the poetic in the everyday, often creating installations involving natural materials & the passage of time stone, steel, ice, wood!
Francisco Gazitua] of of
Francisco Gazitua]

Special projects in our weekly sessions in the Jewellery studio
are a great way to learn techniques & gain new skills in making your own collection of earrings, necklace, rings, broaches, bracelets. You will be guided through the whole process from start to finish of how to make jewellery & develop designs for yourself or a friend or to sell or display including at HSoA Gallery cabinets, all the techniques covered will give you an excellent grounding for making professional jewellery. Annie Ruthven-Taggart is a highly skilled jeweller whose encouragement & knowledge inspires & guides our learners!

No 270 GetCreativeHSoA. Be inspired by artist John Murphy Woolford based in London. “A plate, how should it be interrogated? Perspectively through a system? Eyeballed? Precise or loose? How fluid how fixed?” this is what Murphy Woolford considers. Paul Cezanne put apples on his & painted them together, Vincent Van Gough with lemons, Caroline Dean brings plates to life with feelings. In this painting Murphy Woolford maximises the purity of the subject, capturing its essential characteristics through paint in all its materiality. Look at van Gough Caroline Deane, Cezanne, to make your own version using the materials of your choice & Please send your work to &

We are so proud of the artists who lead the creative way at HSoA who incorporating their knowledge & personal practice into their teaching, making classes relevant & personal to each individual. Thanks to each of you, 2023 will be another great year! 😀.

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Celebrating with our community of artists, students, community partners & visitors is very important to us! The annual service in the consecrated Chapel is a wonderful event that gives us an opportunity to come together in spirit & collaboration.
Thanks to Alistair Tressider of St Lukes, Bernard Haymann Chair of the Cemetery Committee, Erich Wagner & Flick Ray until recently local Councillor for 30 years! & everyone who helped us especially HsoA Trustee Wendy Mackinnon & Jasper for playing live music!

Alan Gouk is a Patron of Hampstead School of Art, we wish Alan & all our Patrons Sir Frank Bowling, Dolorosa Sinaga, Lady Rachel Scott, Francisco Gazitua & a huge welcome to New Patron Angela Leible - more about Angela to come. A Very Merry Christmas & thank you for being patrons of the art school. A very merry festive period to all our student & partners!
This wonderful@portrait of Alan Gouk is painted by HSoA graduate Tedi Lena.

HSoA Gallery is delighted to be exhibiting the recent paintings of Alan Gouk. This remarkable series says the Principal . Accompanied by fully illustrated catalogue with excellent essay by Sam Cornish -
“Since the late 1980s, Gouk’s paintings have been filled with blocks of colour, each with its own distinct physical presence. The blocks allow him to combine the certainty and solidity of an emphatically constructed picture with the dynamic motion of gestural attack. Gesture enlivens solidity; solidity, sometimes with near sculptural bulk, gives weight, depth and permanence to the ebb and flow of gesture. The breadth of his paintings sets up a concertinaing of form, a pulse of expansion and contraction, with shape pressuring shape and forms tilting into each other, or twisting and turning apart.”

Silk painting is a centuries-old technique worked onto white silk with dyes painting directly onto the stretched surface of the silk using a brush. The dyes flow in a mesmerising way creating a painterly experience like no other!
Flowing into the fibers & bonding with the proteins they become part of the silk itself, unlike other paints which very different from using oil, acrylic, or watercolour paints which sit on the surface.
Silk Silk Painting with the public who visited Art Fair Day 2022 in the garden of the beautiful Keats House Museum introduced visitors to Silk painting. This is a centuries-old technique, created onto white silk. The dyes painted directly onto the stretched surface of the silk using a brush, they flow into the fiber & bond with the proteins becoming part of the silk itself, unlike other paints which sit on the surface.
Silk painting has been with us for centuries, perfected by the Chinese & highly valued. Learn this wonderful technique week by week this Autumn Term every Wednesday. Join us! 😀

Pramstead] has been with us for centuries, perfected by the Chinese & highly valued. Learn this wonderful technique week by week this Autumn Term on Wednesdays. Join us! 😀

Pramstead]

No 266 Be inspired by artist Rosalind Davis based in the UK to focus on the dynamics of juxtaposing shapes, lines & curves often used to isolate & display emotion by the 20th century artists who painted geometric forms to express emotions & spirituality, developing out of the previous artistic period of figurative painting & landscapes. Also look Mary Corse & Paul Cope. Use the materials of your choice & Please send your work to & .

Carving School this term is taught in the main art school building & in the historic Chapel Studio. Carving is at the heart of human expression, Egypt established a worldwide reputation as one of the cradles of wood carving, the Shona of Zimbwabwe, the Makonde of Tanzania & the Karamojong of Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria all known for their extraordinary talent in carving spectacular figures from wood, stone & metal work, Greek & Roman traditions are also highly regarded, at HSoA all these inspiration’s can be explored from the initial concept of ideas & to developing your design, learn carving techniques to create a finished sculpture. Those with no sculptural experience will be led through the process stage by stage. Those with more experience will be encouraged to stretch their ideas, reflect on how to develop their designs & given the opportunity to try more experimental techniques. Join us! 😀

No 265 GetCreativeHSoA. Be inspired by artist Christopher Summerfield based in the UK to explore ariel views of landscape which can often appear as microcosms - cells & nature, also look at the ‘Mandelbrot set’ which exhibit an elaborate & infinitely complicated boundary revealing progressively ever-finer recurring detail at intense magnifications. Use the materials of your choice & Please send your work to & .

summerfield

No 264. GetCreativeHSoA.Be Inspired by artist Nidhi Mariam Jacob based in India to create your fantasy choose all the elements from gardens that you love & make your composition. Use the materials of your choice & Please send your work to & . Also look at the work of Henri Russeau & Özlem Sorlu Thompson

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Summer Art School is offered until 26 August. An exciting set of workshops for young artists & adults. Select from drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, jewellery, silk painting. A wonderful way to keep creative over the summer join us in a productive learning & positive environment! Great fun! 😀

No 263 GetCreative HSoA Be inspired by artist Rob Browning based in Virginia USA. Use your dreams to conjure a powerful image, perhaps a wonderful or confusing dream, or an inspiring natural phenomena! Use the materials of your choice & Please send your work to &
Also look at Bruegel, Paula Reigo

No 233 GetCreativeHSoA Be inspired by artist Hedwig Smulders based in the Netherlands who makes sculptures inspired by nature, using drawing as a stepping stone Smulders skill is delicate & sensitively observed to capture qualities which reach into the delicacy of form & shape to create a Albrecht Durer like quality using precise linear articulation the leaves become characterised as ‘individual’s before being immortalised in carved Stone! Use the materials of your choice & Please send your work to &

Join week 3 of Summer Art School select from drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, jewellery, silk painting for adults or for children! A wonderful chance to keep everyone creative enjoy the summer in a productive learning & positive environment! Great fun!