Looking Out

(Hooper, on Hooper)

Born in the ancient parish St Tudy, I grew up in the space between the wind-carved tors of North Cornwall's moors and the cliffs and bays of its Atlantic Ocean coast- between the granite and the strandline [Footnote 1]. Almost an island Cornwall forms the most south-westerly reaches of mainland Britain. Cornwall is an elemental place steeped in myth and legend; the stories it tells itself. This is a place where certainties are blurred in salt-laden ocean breezes and clear distinctions become mere approximations. It is a place where weather and landscape merge into one agitated whole.

The 18th century ecologist Gilbert White stated that “the weather [of a place] is undoubtedly part of its natural history”and in doing so he was asserting that weather and landscape, and the human story lived out within them, are inextricable. There can be few locations that support White's certainty more forcefully than Cornwall, exposed as it is to the untrammelled might of the Atlantic Ocean and its weather systems. For the inhabitants of this determinedlyindependent promontory their fortunes, indeed their very existence, has depended on an acute understanding of the natural history of place. The characteristic lattice of high stone hedges; the staggered harbour walls; the abandonedmine workings and myriad ship wrecks now fragments of memories; the remnants of bronze age villages and field systems, and even earlier ceremonial sites, all testify to this survival story, this natural history.

It is out of the complex geometry, history and atmospherics of Cornwall, this outwardly permanent yet highly provisional land, that my work as a painter and sculptor emerges, and against which it should be viewed. For melandscape is not simply land, sea and air but is arguably more about what separates and connects these headlineelements. Although my work depicts solidity and structure- form and force- it is every bit as much about empty space.In fact I would go as far as to say that my relationship with landscape is much more about the intangible than the measurable and is perhaps even defined by the invisible, the sensed, and the imagined. As a consequence I see mychallenge being to redefine and represent the concept of emptiness; the space in between; the space beyond the words of writers and equations of science; “the nothing that is”.

Landscape is not passive, and should not be passively observed. The same might equally apply to paintings of landscape. It is my view that paintings can, indeed should, reflect back our agency as active constituents of landscape and make demands on us accordingly. Although outwardly resolved and settled, when observed closely over time, landscape emits a sense of relentless change and is full of competing forces. With this in mind my work seeks torecord the constant negotiation between the processes of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Change is a function of time and landscape registers time in all its scales, from the ephemeral to the seemingly eternal.Landscape also exhibits repeating markers of time; markers perhaps exemplified by the seasons or the rolling ocean waves which, like echoes, make and remake themselves into infinity.

In the latter half of the 1950's the internationally renowned Cornish artist Peter Lanyon [1918-1964] began to produce work that he would describe as “weather paintings”. One day in 1956 whilst walking on the beach at Perranporth, a few miles from his home in Carbis Bay, Lanyon watched three gliders soaring above the cliffs to the west. He took this scene and painted “High Ground” [1956]. This painting combined the solid with the evanescent and contained the strong diagonal that would go on to become a central compositional feature of his later work; “the diagonal lifts me from the ground into the sky.... I saw three gliders over a cliff and decided to go up there myself.” [Footnote 2]

The gliders that Lanyon had observed belonged to the Cornish Gliding Club [CGC] which had been formed in 1955 by a small group of ex-RAF fliers. The CGC was based at a decommissioned World War II airfield at Higher Trevellas which was situated on an elevated site between Perranporth and St Agnes. Trevellas would prove to be both a privileged and a poignant location for this pioneering club. The updraughts created by the vertiginous cliffs of the airfield's western flank, and that made the location ideal for the CGC's unpowered flight, only a few years earlier would have buffeted young Spitfire pilots as they set off on their perilous missions.

It was not until 1959 that Peter Lanyon eventually joined the gliding club and followed his diagonal into the skies. My father Harry Hooper, who was a founder member and later the Chairman of the Cornwall Gliding Club, would be one of Lanyon's instructors. It is likely that my father was piloting one of the gliders that Lanyon had observed on that day in 1956, a moment that not only heralded an evolutionary step in Peter Lanyon's painting practice but would influence the evolution of abstract painting more generally.

My father's commitment to the CGC would prove evolutionary for me too. I took my first steps at the airfield when Lanyon himself, rather impulsively, deposited me on the peritrack by the clubhouse as he set off to recover an incoming glider. The airfield was a place of seemingly infinite horizons and it was here, on this exposed clifftop, perhaps more than anywhere else, that I would begin to forge my relationship with Cornwall's enigmatic natural history. It was here that I even began to explore the paradox between the essential interiority of this relationship and what I see as the imperative for the artist which is to stand on the outside looking out.

In the twenty years following the end of World War II the CGC fermented its pioneering spirit, becoming a hub for adventurers from a multitude of disciplines and backgrounds. Peter Lanyon was not the only artist at the club with the Scottish painter, and fellow resident of West Penwith, Alan Davie joining just a year later. Davie would also become a pupil of my father and another regular visitor to our family home in St Tudy [Footnote 3]. Both Lanyon and Davie were part of a post-war mission to reconstruct our relationship with landscape using the techniques and materiel of abstract art. In and around the CGC in those early days, conversations about post-modernist theories and the semiotics and practice of painting mingled with the language and mechanisms of flight.

In flight, glider pilots are engaged in a continual process of mapping 3-dimensional space. They overlay the tangible, 2- dimensional view of landscape with a complex matrix of invisible, sensory, even subjective inputs; in terms they create their own interior mind-maps. All of these inputs, measurable and otherwise, are assembled into something that is as much a predictive, anticipatory tool as it is a statement of how things are. Rather like the Rebbellib [Footnote 4] of early Marshall Island navigators these maps only truly exist in the individual imagination making them mutable and highly personal abstractions of space and time.

Painting is map-making or, rather more accurately, I see painting as a form of way-finding, the process prior to map-making. Way-finding is the essential mystery of how we navigate the world. It is a combination of science and poetry; a combination of the learnt and the innate. In terms of my own practice I will, on occasion, construct my own versions of Rebbellib, and these abstract 3-dimensional charts enable me to organise and resolve my observations and experiences on to a 2-dimensional painting surface. The finished painting might then be considered the final step in a more metaphysical endeavour.

Much of the background chatter at Higher Trevellas in those early years concerned meteorology and the CGC became something of a weather laboratory. Wind speeds and directions; air temperatures and pressures, were all monitored and recorded. At ground level as well as up in the air column pilots would study cloud types as indicators of frontal systems and thermal activity. They were looking for all of the detectable signals of air movement and lift, which are so crucial to their ambitions, and these would often include clues such as the flight patterns of birds or the drift of smoke from chimneys and gorse fires. All of this observation, measurement and recording provided the information needed to plot pathways through three-dimensional space.

Meteorology, literally “the study of things high in the air”, could be considered the art of looking up. My father was one of the CGC's more dedicated practitioners of this art submitting a number of articles on the particularities of Cornwall's meteorology to “Sailplane & Gliding” [Footnote 5] magazine, the preeminent publication on the subject of unpowered flight. He would even be the first to identify and record a wave cloud formation that develops above the moors near Rough Tor [Footnote 6] during rare periods of persistent north-easterly winds. Wave clouds [Footnote 7] signal areas of strong, smooth and relatively static lift, often extending up into high altitudes, which makes them of particular interest to glider pilots. Flyers would come to Cornwall from far and wide to seek out this elusive phenomenon, and it became known in gliding circles as “Hooper's Wave”.

Wave forms feature in much of my work, sometimes referenced in the titles of paintings such as “Waveform: Orange and Grey” or the developing “Rough Tor Wave” series. Waves [Footnote 8] are visible and audible manifestations of the physical environment however, less obviously, waves create the shadows and echoes that infer form through absence. Waves are my foundational forms. Waves are to me what cylinders, spheres and cones were to Paul Cezanne or cubic and rectilinear elements were to Braque, Picasso and others. So pivotal have they become that I use the term “Waveism”to describe my evolving theory of painting and representation.

Cornwall is a land of layers: the rock and mineral strata cut through and exploited by long-abandoned mine workings, or revealed in wave-carved cliff faces; the balancing and slumping granite blocks stacked up on eroding tors; clouds ordered in ranks on advancing weather fronts, ribbons of colour borrowed from the setting sun; the coruscating bands of ocean waves, narrowing and merging towards the horizon.

Layers and waves have much in common. They can be stretched and compressed; they deflect, reflect and inflect; they interfere and cancel and they can combine. Layers and waves register time as they progress, accumulate, and decay. They are ubiquitous and because of this they have become commonly used metaphorical devices: waves of emotion; layers of history. Layers and waves not only connect us to time and space, but position us within the continuum. They are the forces that impel us and the structures on which, and within which, we live out our lives.

The layering of paint is, in part, a metaphor for the laying down of memories. Each new layer of paint, each new memory, building on the colour and texture of those that precede it and substantiating those that follow. Layers that are obscured or only partially revealed; layers worn away, their original intensity now only a memory. Moments of clarity slightly beyond our grasp; glimpses of the familiar in a matrix that is amorphous, fluid and diffuse; echoes from the past drifting, combining and fading, perhaps barely perceptible but still always there. The criss-crossing and interweaving waves of texture, colour and form in my paintings are contrived to disrupt the familiar signifiers of land, sea and air creating complex surfaces that can be at once ambiguous and resolved. My paintings blur and deconstruct the distinctions between the most recognisable elements of landscape.

Edges are key to this deconstruction process. Just as we have a predisposition to see patterns we also have a tendency to encapsulate form and to clearly identify where one form ends and another begins. This compartmentalisation is a means of simplification, a way of reducing complexity. I do not see edges as clear lines of demarcation but instead view them as zones of transition. Japanese Zen Buddhist aesthetics has a term wabi -sabi which is essentially the appreciation of transience, imperfection and incompleteness. Because of what I see as their essential ambivalence edges might be regarded as possessing wabi-sabi and the incomplete outer margins of my paintings are a register of this ambivalence.

Borders, boundaries, edges are contingent and provisional. These are the grey areas, the areas where the equations of science break down, where knowledge wavers and the potential for new discovery begins. Science inhabits the space between “why” and “is” which, I would argue, is the same space that is occupied by art. However where science is preoccupied with bridging the gap between “why” and “is”, art, particularly abstract art, is free from the constraints of direct meaning and explanation. Art has a responsibility to go beyond the edge and venture into the ambiguous,uncultivated and previously uncharted regions.

I typically refer to my paintings as Edgescapes and this is in part a comment on the essential liminality of the narrow and exposed Cornish peninsula. More than this however it is a challenge to direct meaning and to the constraints of traditional terminology such as “landscape” or “seascape”. The acclaimed Cornish poet Charles Causley [1917-2003] loosened these constraints in poems such as “The Seasons in North Cornwall”. Using his distinctive voice Causley conjures allusions to time and place that locate us within a landscape that is enigmatic and equivocal yet still deceptively accessible. Just as poets can challenge the conventions and complacency of language so artists can challenge the orthodoxies of visual representation.

When considering the British artists of the 1950's and early 1960's the art critic Lawrence Alloway found himself frustrated by their retention of direct landscape references. He was uncompromising in his views and saw Cornwall as particularly vulnerable to what he considered to be anachronistic, even oppressive, sentimentalism. Alloway would champion Peter Lanyon, and others in the St Ives group, who he saw as detaching themselves from the restrictions of representation, embracing complexity and uncertainty in their pursuit of a new landscape paradigm.

Lanyon's “weather paintings” asserted the importance of the metaphysical in the new approach to landscape representation, particularly those, like “Thermal” [1960] [Footnote 9], which were directly inspired by his gliding exploits. In these paintings Lanyon attempted to go beyond the limits of meaning towards pure sensation. In doing so he was reaffirming the (at the time) controversial late-period paintings of JMW Turner [1775-1851]. “Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth” [1842] is perhaps particularly relevant to this conversation as in order to produce this painting Turner claimed to have lashed himself to the mast of a boat so that he might experience the full, elemental force of the storm. He would say of this work, somewhat confrontationally, “I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like.” It might be suggested that Lanyon's mast was the seat of a glider.

The principal concern of my work is the individuated experience of landscape, and the ontological consequences that can flow from this. As my work does not dwell on pure observation it might be seen on the arc that begins with Turner and passes through the likes of Peter Lanyon, and others known as the St Ives group. Important as observation is, my paintings attempt to utilise the full range of sensory and phenomenological inputs. I think of landscape as “tuned space” and this alludes to the temporal, resonance of place; the multi-factorial harmonics of a location. My work combines the immutable structures of landscape- identifiable, knowable, describable- with the unmeasurable, fugitive vibrations of memory, change and doubt. As such I am interested in subsuming notions of the collectively apprehensible into something profoundly personal.

My paintings are undeniably about landscape but are also part of a broader discussion about meaning and ambiguity. The Spanish essayist, poet and philosopher Maria Zambrano [1904-91] suggested that “Image is dialectic at a standstill” and on this basis the process of painting could be seen as an attempt to animate the dialectic. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze [1925-1995] [Footnote 10], who used art as a vector for many of his ideas, asserted that identity derives from difference, with difference revealing itself through repetition. Repetition is key to my practice and I produce works that are often variations on a theme or improvisations around and away from a familiar tune. This approach to paintingclosely mirrors my engagement with specific locations; the essence and nuance of place only being revealed through repeated visits.

I typically adopt “portrait” or square format for my paintings and this too is a comment on traditional notions of how landscape should be viewed. Formats are merely conventions and, in turn, conventions are impositions that often go unchallenged. The “landscape/portrait” formats for pictorial representation are conventions that emanated from the earliest days of photography. Landscape, itself, has no ordained scale or orientation nor does it prescribe an orthodoxway of apprehending it. Selecting something other than “landscape” format for my work is not just a rejection of an arbitrary convention but more a device through which to reflect landscape back at the viewer. An upright or square image frames the space occupied by the viewer every bit as much as defining the space represented in, or occupied by, the work. To paraphrase the preface to Gigantic Cinema: A weather anthology [Footnote 11], The height of landscape is a measure of man.

The time spent at the CGC and in the company of the notable figures that populated the landscape of my formative years, was undoubtedly highly influential. Despite all of these charismatic inputs however, I recall particularly how, as a very young boy, I was fascinated by an old workshop door encrusted with layers and spatters of paint and suffused with the aromatics of turpentine and linseed oil. The paint had built up over generations as tradesmen cleaned out their brushes at the end of their working days. I created worlds from the smallest moments in the folds and contours of these cracked, chipped and abraded paint layers, with my imagination allowing the abstract shapes, colours and textures to become something other. This overlooked and neglected door was a cipher, a diagonal to the otherwise unseen, and revealed the ineffable power of paint.

Without fully apprehending any of this at the time, the workshop door, combined with the esoteric conversations that swirled around those early years, undoubtedly catalysed my own map-making process. Accumulating knowledge of my environment, and being encouraged to do so in ways that looked beyond the immediately apprehensible, I was collecting and collating the elements that I would later use to produce my paintings and sculptures. In terms, I wastaking up my position in landscape.

Footnotes:

1 Strandline: is the archaic term for shore line, but also refers to the line of deposition left by a retreating tide, a marker of the lunar cycle.

2 Taken from a recording of a talk given to the British Council in 1963

3 On one occasion Davie made an unannounced visit to the Hooper house when, attempting a cross country challenge, he lost height and lift and was forced into a field-landing on the outskirts of St Tudy.

4 Rebbellib were the abstract stick charts constructed by traditional seafarers of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia and are considered a significant contribution to the history of cartography. Representing ocean swells and currents- at different times of the year- along with their relationship with the island archipelagos they were unique to an individual navigator and could not be readily understood by any other. As such, not only do they describe the geometry of physical space and time but they also represent the memories and experience of their maker. Rebbellib were superseded by the development of modern navigational aids, and the reliance on engines rather than sail, and with them has disappeared the handed-down knowledge of the elders.

5 “Sailplane & Gliding”, originally launched as “Sailplane and Glider” in 1930. Published by the British Gliding Association it is subscribed to by enthusiasts worldwide.

6 Rough Tor is Cornwall's second highest peak. “Rough” is locally pronounced “row”, as in argument

7 Wave clouds (cumulus lenticularis) are formed as stable air flows over raised landforms; the moist warm air condensing in the cool crests of these waves forming the characteristic ripple and lens-shaped clouds. They are akin to the standing waves that develop in fast flowing rivers.

8 Waves also exist at the invisible, quantum level; they are the unseen oscillations and distortions of fundamental particles; they may yet be found to constitute fundamental particles. Light, the very stuff of image, equivocates about whether it is hard particle or immaterial wave.

9 “Thermal” was purchased by The Tate Gallery in 1961 and in an article titled “Gliding in the Tate”, which featured in an edition of “Sailplane and Gliding” later that year, Lanyon notes: “As I have rarely done anything between leaving the ground and hitting it again (other than watching the stick jump at will- I found out the other day you have to hold it!) I don't know how I dared to call the painting “Thermal”. The only consolation is that most glider pilots, however experienced, have never seen a thermal in the flesh.”

10 Gilles Deleuze [1925-1995] argued, in his work Repetition and Difference, that counter to traditional reasoning, difference is prior to identity. That to confront reality honestly we must grasp things as they are and not be influenced by concepts of identity such as form, categories, resemblances, predicates et al: “if philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as it claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not”

11 Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology edited by Alice Oswald & Paul Keegan [First published by Jonathan Cape 2020]