I loved Graeme’s first ‘Trunk’ collections in oils and charcoal and visited his Yorkshire studio five years ago, blown away by the rugged beauty of the Dales and it’s majestic trees. So this latest project in inks on paper, inspired by a totally different landscape and light, was both familiar but intriguing and very exciting. The work is so different in ink and water ; a natural medium that flows through and over the bark.  It is a remarkable collection, influenced by his mastery of colour (as a fashion designer) but also more assured - you can’t rework in ink like oil paint and you capture light and colour in a more abstracted way so the result seems more immediate, more experimental and more fluid.  I bought a very large charcoal work from him four years ago … and I will be adding a new watercolour version to my collection! 

Having grown up in Southern Africa I knew the trees that provided the much needed shade and beautiful wood, like the coastal pines, the eucalyptus and the milk wood tree but I never imagined at fourteen years old, I would be bringing a forest from the Cape of Good Hope to Mayfair. The life size works on paper are site specific in the sense that they could only be painted from his studio on the Cape of Good Hope. Graeme spent last winter recording with ink and water on paper, the trunks and barks of these beautiful trees that surrounded the house they were renting, like the botanical artists and illustrators of the 18th and 19th century.  But with Graeme’s new show the beauty of his colours, and the light are touched by the African sun … and there is a freedom of mark making that has created a much broader impression than the trunk or bark of a tree; the work has become a landscape of colour and form.

Graeme also commissioned and collaborated with the Frances VH Mohair studio in the Karoo on a tapestry of one of his water colours. The work is the emphasis on materials of the natural mohair and the imprints of the maker, 72 year old master weaver  Katriena Kammies. The result has been far from paired back, a mixture of techniques, yarns and playing with light and texture to create something that captures the movement and freedom of watercolours whilst honouring the structure and form of bark. As Frances writes ‘The result looks and feels both like our studio, yet it is distinctly the work and imaginings of Graeme Black. As with all great collaborations the process has stretched us open, challenged us and invited play into the process. We have learnt an entire new way of diluting woven form into a more fluid, water coloured medium.’ 

- Isabel

 Good Hope by Graeme Black

'My creative practice in Yorkshire is firmly based on painting with Oils on canvas drawing inspiration from the varied woodland landscapes around my home Wood End near Semerwater in the Yorkshire Dales. My studio in a converted 18th Century cow barn the perfect location fo the large scale works that have been central to my practice these last years.

While a beautiful place to live, winters in the Dales are cold, wet and above all dark and my desire for a strong bright light has drawn me to spend time in South Africa during the northern winters. I have been exploring the Western Cape for many years but in 2023 I was able to spend a few months there in a wonderful house on Kommetjie beach almost at the tip of the Cape of Good Hope. Wanting to paint en plein air as much as possible the inner court yard of the house allowed me shelter from the ever present strong south easterly winds while a small out building converted into a perfect studio in which to work. But the problem of painting in oils in a foreign land with limited time ... a long drying schedule, the transport of large stretched canvases etc led me to start to explore a different medium, that of coloured inks on paper.