Evolver 145

John Gammans John Gammans makes large drawings and monochrome paintings on paper and canvas. His current obsession is the wind, the way it performs, our relationship with it as human beings. We can feel it and see the way that it makes trees, grass, water, even buildings move but in itself it is invisible. His work is an attempt “to make the wind visible”. As part of his research he constructed a wind machine out of artists easels and bits of wood. It was initially designed as a prototype, but as time progressed his desire to “tidy it up’ became irrelevant because it had become a tool to “understand what I was actually seeing in the landscape and decipher what was going on”. He attaches a gel pen to the mechanism, “they fl ow nicely”, and a roll of paper and lets the machine and the wind collaborate in making the drawings. His aim is “to capture difference between stillness and motion”. There is no weight of line in these drawings. The marks are thin and regular with no variation in the width because they are machine drawn. However what you get is a beautifully fl owing line that dips and turns, winding round upon itself following the direction of the wind. Gammans has become fascinated with what happens when the wind pauses and the pen stops. The gaps between the lines have, for him, become “tiny negative pockets” of space, which he identi fi es and isolates. He places clear plastic over the drawings and marks the empty white areas with thick acrylic pen. He then scales up these selected shapes and transfers them onto canvas creating large powerful paintings using black oil paint and cold wax. He works on these paintings on the fl oor and on the wall, stretching the canvas on industrial galvanized poles - a nod to his initial training in three dimensional design. This scaffolding adds a sense of power and replicates the elemental feel of the wind. These paintings are sculptural and in a way quite confrontational – exuding the strength that the unbridled wind in fl icts on us when we attempt to navigate it. He calls this group of works Interplay . They mimic the “interplay of wind within the landscape, little tiny events that are happening, large marks representing tiny things – using paint”. In addition to his machine drawings he gets out into the landscape with his sketchbook. Storm Eunice hit the UK on 18th February 2022 and was one of the rare recent storms given a red warning by the met of fi ce. John Gammans was out in that storm drawing in his sketchbook with a gel pen! There is huge energy in the resulting wind conceptualisation paintings where he is “imagining what the wind would look like if it was on a light spectrum and we could see it”. He cites Cezanne and Van Gogh as in fl uences and more recently the landscape paintings of John Virtue. In the monochrome works that he has been making for the last three plus years there are hints of Franz Kline, the American painter associated with the Abstract Expressionists. There is also a three dimensionality that suggests his next move might be sculptural. Fiona Robinson ‘INTERPLAY NO. 6’ (Oil and cold wax on canvas with galvanised steel stretchers, 198 x 198 cm, June 2025) SOMERSET OPEN STUDIOS 2025 • 11 Follow evolvermagazine on Instagram Venue 26: Old Tannery Works, Victoria Road, YEOVIL, BA21 5AZ. Wednesday - Sunday 10am - 5pm. 07580 667343.