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| Look above the litter |
Only an outsider could appreciate the beauty
of north London, Canadian artist Mychael Barratt tells Jane Wright
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Sunday Afternoon in Hampstead
Love in the Time of Coleridge
Life Imitating Art VII
Whirlwind Romance
Mychael Barratt
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WATCH out good burghers of Hampstead, Highgate and Islington’s
Caledonian Road. There’s a man with a camera and sketchpad
about just dying to capture you, your neighbour, roofline and local
pub and put them onto canvas.
In fact, you may already be there in Highgate artist Mychael Barratt’s
latest exhibition of oils and prints which opened at Gallery K in
Heath Street, Hampstead, at the weekend. For the show depicts with
his trademark humour and affection what Mychael calls north London’s
“great cast of inhabitants” and “the wonderful, unplanned
little vistas of historic buildings from overlapping periods which
are everywhere you look”.
At his home in Tile Kiln Lane, Highgate, he says: “In Hampstead
and Highgate I don’t need to think what to paint next. I can’t
help just walking around and seeing things. The buildings have become
equally important, but it’s impossible to draw stories without
the people. I gather people up.”
So he explains that when he needed more faces for his oil painting
of an opera singer and her audience entitled ‘It’s not
over ‘till the Fat Lady Sings’, “I’d look for
them each day when I walked my two daughters to school. Everyone
there was seen between my house and St Michael’s primary in
North Road, Highgate.”
But with his irrepressible sense of humour, Mychael can’t just
leave it at that. The etchings from his Life Imitating Art series
are rich with jokey references to old masters. Thus the poses of
four contemporary men he depicts in front of King’s Cross Station
echo French sculptor Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, while
behind them Barratt has placed a fast food van advertising Burgers
of Cally, in reference to nearby Caledonian Road.
And his print of the historic Spaniard’s Inn on Hampstead Heath
isn’t limited to portraying what he calls “that wonderful
feeling of community in front of a pub in Hampstead which is just
overflowing”, nor yet his view that “historic pubs are
often the most beautiful buildings in an area”. Every character
in the scene makes reference to Spanish art, from a pantomime pierrot
of Picasso’s Blue Period to a background figure in the pose
of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Children, naturally in the guise
of Mychael’s Spanish printer friend Jordi.
But the artist who is also an accomplished vocal mimic is quick
to add: “I never make fun of the people in my paintings, just
as I never impersonate people to their faces.”
Instead, he seeks to inspire the viewer with his vision of north
London, as he says, “to feel a renewed enthusiasm for all the
things that I love”.
The inspiration he draws from the city he pronounces “different
from any other, with a greater diversity of more interesting people”
is doubtless aided by his own eccentricity.
“As a teenager,” he confides, “I used to dress in
a top hat and frock coat. But I stopped the moment I came to London,
where dressing outlandishly is so much more the norm. Here it’s
deliberate anarchy.”
He still spells Mychael with a Y as a personal affectation. “I
have lied in the past and blamed it on my parents,” he explains,
“but I introduced it myself when I was only nine and now it’s
in my passport.”
Mychael lives with wife Amanda and daughters Matilda, nine, and
Freya, five, but Mychael himself grew up in Canada.
He says: “I’ve never sat down and had a game plan. I only
came to London on holiday at the age of 24 as a stop-over on my
way to Dublin. But I fell in love with the architecture here and
never made it to Ireland.”
He continues: “I was walking down Parkway in Camden Town the
other day and someone said what an ugly area it is.
“But I replied, just look up at the road junction with the
tube in it. Those buildings are absolutely stunning. In any other
city they’d be a historic focal point.
“But people who live all their lives here don’t look above
eye-level, above the litter.
“Anybody can make it look interesting, but having a fresh pair
of eyes is important for making others find it beautiful.”
He paints at his home in Highgate, which he “discovered, then
settled, because the area is remarkably foliated like no other,
with a unique combination of old buildings, hills and trees,”
the opposite of the arid prairie town of Winnipeg, where he grew
up.
The fact he now lives in a modern house is, he continues, “a
sad anomaly. But my large open plan bedroom is all glass and works
really well as my studio”.
From here he paints lovers flying above the Highgate rooftops, echoing
Marc Chagall.
Swimming against the current, conceptual art tide, Mychael admits:
“Like anyone who shows his work and wants people to buy it,
I want to be immortal and for my paintings to last longer than I
do. But for me right now, the judges are still out.”
• Mychael Barratt exhibition, runs at Gallery K, Heath Street,
NW3, until January 30. Tuesday to Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 11am-6pm,
Sunday 2.30pm-6.30pm. 020 7794 4949. |
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