Art & Photography

Soaked, Not Resting: negotiating the unprimed canvas

A new exhibition examines the canvas staining techniques used by Helen Frankenthaler and Aimée Parrott, two unique artists separated by a generation

Soaked, Not Resting is a new show at London’s Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, which sets out to explore the work of two unique artists and their use of canvas staining techniques. The Mayfair-based gallery is displaying pieces by the late American artist Helen Frankenthaler and emerging British painter Aimée Parrott, both of whom employ ‘soak-stain’ processes to manipulate unprimed canvases — a practice made famous by abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock. Conor Mahon speaks to Parrott and the exhibition’s curator, Jon Horrocks, about artistic breakthroughs, their technical approaches, and Frankenthaler’s legacy.

When did you first encounter Frankenthaler’s art?

Aimée Parrott: Early on in my BA at University College Falmouth, I saw The Bay and was astounded by it. Compared to a painter like Jackson Pollock, Frankenthaler’s work seemed to be less aggressive and more expansive; her paintings were simultaneously bold and light.

What I grew to admire in her work – and in work by painters like Joan Mitchell – was the combination of figuration and abstraction. For me, their paintings don’t seem to be about a reductive purity, but rather the relationship between memory, experience and the act of painting.

Aimée Parrott, First Hand, Second Hand, 2014 – watercolour and acrylic medium on bleach-treated canvas
Aimée Parrott, First Hand, Second Hand, 2014 – watercolour and acrylic medium on bleach-treated canvas

Aimée Parrott, Secondary Wrinkles, 2014 – dye and printing ink on calico
Aimée Parrott, Secondary Wrinkles, 2014 – dye and printing ink on calico

How has Frankenthaler’s manipulation of the canvas influenced you?

Aimée Parrott: I think the staining technique she used made such an impact on me because it emphasised a certain duality in painting; the surface is as much a part of the work as the paint that sits on it. Frankenthaler once said: ‘I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it.’ I feel that the emphasis of this double vision instills a dynamism in the thing you are looking at. The use of raw canvas allows the mark to sink beneath the surface, becoming an integral part of the fabric – a stretched out object, like a skin under which one can trace action.

“Soaked, not resting” was phrase Frankenthaler used to describe a breakthrough when creating Mountains and Sea. What eureka moments did you experience when creating this series of works?

Aimée Parrott: I think that my most recent breakthrough was probably the creation of the ‘over-lap’, where the surface of the painting is reproduced by scanning and then printed onto another fabric hanging loosely over the original. I think the simplicity of this technique lends the work a physical ambivalence between original and reproduction, between painting and sculpture. Superimposing one piece onto another creates a sort of syncopated rhythm so that it exists in direct relation to the next.

When did you first encounter both artists’ work?

Jon Horrocks: I’ve known Frankenthaler’s work for many years and always had a soft spot for her paintings. I first encountered Parrott’s work at the Royal Academy Graduate Show in 2014 and was instantly blown away by the removed, ghost-like quality that characterised her mark making.

How and why did you bring their paintings together?

Jon Horrocks: We wanted to position the physicality of the canvas historically by recalling the developments by America’s colour field painters of the 1950s and 1960s, who famously drew attention to the flatness of the canvas’ surface. Soaked, Not Resting examines the ways Frankenthaler and Parrott negotiate that picture plane.

What were the main challenges in curating this exhibition?

Jon Horrocks: We didn’t want to be overly prescriptive and force a direct link between the two artists. To avoid this, we didn’t show Parrott the works we had selected by Frankenthaler prior to the show, which allowed the similarities and differences in the work to come out naturally.

Aimée Parrott, Tears, 2014 – watercolour and acrylic medium on bleach-treated canvas
Aimée Parrott, Tears, 2014 – watercolour and acrylic medium on bleach-treated canvas

Helen Frankenthaler  Quattrocento, 1984  acrylic on canvas
Helen Frankenthaler, Quattrocento,1984 – acrylic on canvas

Can you tell us more about the technical side of both painters’ work and why their relationship with the canvas is so intriguing?

Jon Horrocks: Frankenthaler is renowned as an exponent of colour field painting, for pouring thinned paint directly onto raw and unprimed canvas. Frankenthaler did away with heavy, material brushstrokes and, instead, used squeegees, sponges and household brushes to manoeuvre the paint horizontally across the surface.

Parrott uses this ‘soak-stain’ effect to a similar end. Her large watercolour paintings use an open screen-printing technique where pigment is transferred directly onto the canvas through a polyester mesh.

The result from Frankenthaler is an emphasis on the flatness of the canvas; Parrott instead plays with pictorial depth by building up veil-like layers of colour that coalesce into amorphous forms.

Soaked, Not Resting runs at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery until 21 February 2015