We are delighted to host Richard Crawford, who runs our weekly life drawing and life painting classes, for an exhibition at the Newington Green Meeting House (39a Newington Green, N16 9PR) this December.
The exhibition will be open on Thursday 11th, Friday 12th, Thursday 18th and Friday 19th December 2025, 12.00 – 6.00pm. There will also be a private view on Friday 12th, between 6.30pm and 8.30pm to which all are welcome.
Some words from Richard:
In December I will be holding an exhibition of some of the paintings that I made this year in the Mary Wollstonecraft Room at the Newington Green Meeting House entitled ‘Life Room’.
The Mary Wollstonecraft room provides ideal lighting conditions with windows on both sides. It is plain and simple, with white walls and a wooden floor. In the past it served as the Sunday School room of the historic Unitarian chapel which is now where the Newington Green life classes take place. A bust of Mary Wollstonecraft sits in the corner of the room where we work, keeping an eye on us as we go about our drawing and painting. (See Nora's blog: 'Dreaming in Public' at www.life-classes.com)
All the paintings were made from direct observation but they do not follow a programme or formula, such as what William Coldstream or Henry Tonks would have taught their students to obey (see blog 'Why did some Art Schools give up life drawing in the 1960's? at www.life-classes.com). Contrary to the academic figure drawing tradition, I have included the room in which the model posed, to situate them in a specific place.
These paintings are realistic, but they do not aspire to be photographic. They are interpretations of the subject, not simply descriptions of what things looked like. Some elements have been deliberately added to the paintings. For example, the complicated relationships of forms in space have been organised into a strong two dimensional composition, using blocks of colour and hard outlines. Someone once said that under all paintings there lies a grid, like a Mondrian painting. I have tried to use this principle to give my compositions some structural stability. Secondly, in order to produce a more abstract composition, many of the details of the figure have been simplified.
Artists such as Kudzanai-Violet Hwami and Alice Neel, both of whom have exhibited at the Victoria Miro gallery in Islington (www.victoria-miro.com), have influenced my approach to figure painting and composition. Both are exponents of a type of figurative painting that combines formal strength with psychological depth. I can only envy their skill!
I hope that everyone who come to see ‘Life Room’ will enjoy the exhibition!
Richard Crawford
October 2025