PATRICK CAULFIELD

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PATRICK CAULFIELD

•   His paintings look like commercial advertising
  or a painting-by-numbers illustration because he
  removes all visible brush marks, limits his
  palette to bright bold colours in commercial
  gloss paint and surrounds his patches of flat
  colour with strong black outlines. 

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• Caulfield's painting style was in part a
  reaction to the highly personalised painting
  style of Abstract Expressionism, but he was also
  strongly influenced by Fernand Leger and the
  Cubist painter Juan Gris.

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• Caulfield's domestic interiors are often lifted
  directly from 1950s interior decorating magazines
  and they retain their original aspirational
  mood.  Devoid of narrative, Caulfield
  nevertheless imbues each canvas with a powerful
  emotional register by suffusing them with a
  dominant saturated colour. Frequently
  melancholic, these interiors are always totally
  still and without a human presence except maybe
  for a light left on. 

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Sweet bowl 1967
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• Pottery
• 1969

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• Interior Noon 1970 Interior Morning 1970

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• Napkins and Onions
• 1972
• Colour Screenprint

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• Ah! Storm clouds rushed from the Channel coasts
• 1973

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• Oh! If one of them, some fine evening would try
• 1973

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• R and I am alone in my house
• 1973
• Screenprint

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• E Ill take my life monotonous
• 1973
• Screenprint

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• L And, with my eyes bolting toward the
  Unconscious
• 1973
• Screenprint

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• Ah! This life is so every day
• 1973
• Screenprint

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• She fled down the avenue
• 1973
• Screenprint

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• After Lunch
• 1973

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Oh Helen I roam 1973 Jug 1974
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Glazed Earthenware 1976
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Still Life, Autumn Fashion 1978
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Interior with a picture 1985-6
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• Interior with a Picture 1985 - 6
• This large oil painting shows a domestic
  interior.  But instead of choosing a traditional
  view of a sitting room, bedroom or dining room,
  Caulfield has focussed on a confined area that is
  the junction between a landing and two corridors.
   All the elements are perspectivally correct,
  but greatly simplified.  The effect is to make
  the space seem simultaneously real and
  cartoon-like.  Although the distance between the
  viewer and the furthest point in the scene is
  perhaps no more than twelve feet, there is
  nevertheless a strong sense of depth within the
  picture.  This is because the foreground, middle
  ground and background are strongly delineated by
  the architecture and divide the canvas into
  thirds. 

• As we look at this painting, we appear to be
  standing near the end of a corridor.  There is a
  wall to our right and ahead of us, in the
  background, is the base of a staircase seen in
  profile that leads upwards to the right.  Between
  the staircase and us, occupying the middle ground
  is the opening to a second corridor that
  disappears off to our right.  This corridor runs
  in front of and parallel to the staircase.  The
  paintings composition across the canvas is also
  divided into thirds.  The left hand side of the
  canvas is taken up with the area at the bottom of
  the flight of stairs, which consists of a newel
  post and the first strut of the banisters.  The
  middle of the painting contains the corridor wall
  facing us and, since we are placed at a slight
  angle to the corridor, we can see a short way
  down its length.  This middle section of the
  painting is the most complex and contains the
  most detail, since the top third of this corridor
  wall is covered with heavily patterned wallpaper
  in scarlet and bright yellow.  The wall below the
  paper is painted in a deep red and separating the
  two is a dado rail.  Hanging right at the end of
  the corridor but almost central to the picture as
  a whole, is a still life painting of a jug,
  glass, candle and plate.  This painting within
  the painting stands out strongly because unlike
  the simplified forms and flattened colour of the
  surrounding architecture, the still life has been
  painted in a highly realistic manner.  Directly
  below the still life and under the dado rail is a
  large oval shape that stands slightly proud of
  the wall, like a plaster moulding.
• The right hand side of the painting involves the
  intersection of the right hand corridor with the
  one in which we appear to be standing.  The wall
  to our right gives the impression of running on
  past our shoulder, while the angle it creates
  where it joins the short spur of the corridor
  wall, is emphasised by the dado rail that runs
  around both walls and off the edge of the
  canvas.  This whole painting is saturated with
  deep reds and warm orange-browns that provide an
  intense contrast with the yellow wallpaper and a
  number of patches of green and blue in and around