Alic

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Composite Shadows

Front cover:

Autumn Picnic / 2018

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

Alice MumfordComposite Shadows

16 Sept –7 Oct 2019

Belgrave St Ives22 Fore Street, St IvesCornwall TR26 1HE

01736 794888

info@belgravestives.co.ukwww.belgravestives.co.uk

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Thoughts on the history of shadows

I like to start with Bellini and Mantegna. Prior to these, shadows in

Medieval art had not been important. The rediscovery of Roman

mosaics and painting brought about an awareness of naturalism,

and that meant the painting of shadows. Bellini and Mantegna were

brothers-in-law and often painted the same subject, starting at about

the same place in terms of painting shadows. However they gradually

parted company and developed their own respective leanings.

If we look at later works, we can see that Bellini’s shadows are

naturalistic while Mantegna’s become dramatic. The dramatic shadow

is a bit like a ‘flashbulb moment’ in the way photographers used to

take photos with a huge flashbulb, capturing a dramatic moment, or

like lightning illuminating the landscape for a moment. Maybe those

sudden moments of illumination are fewer and therefore seem more

dramatic. We can see how they developed in chiaroscuro, Caravaggio,

Giorgio de Chirico and later in Alfred Hitchcock films.

Naturalistic shadows depend on half tones and the middle of the

tonal scale. They are many moments and can be either elongated

time or ambiguous time. Half tones give more chance for the passing

of time and are less fixed: Rembrandt’s self portraits, Marandi’s still

lives, the chair in Gwen John’s A Corner Of The Artist’s Room In

Paris, and Bellini’s Madonna and Child, for example.

I once went to Tate St Ives to look at a Bonnard painting with a group

of students. Someone asked, “what time of the day do you think it is?”.

We couldn’t decide. Bonnard makes composite shadows like a comp-

osite character in a book. These paintings are not made from one

moment but from a whole day or time, from being in a place. 

The philosopher Henri Bergson’s ideas on time are very helpful in

explaining. He argues that when we measure time we are treating it

in terms of space. Let’s take an hour; an hour is one twenty fourth

of a day, and a day is one revolution of the Earth. That revolution is a

movement in space. An hour is a chunk of that movement. That means

that when we try to measure how long a process takes – say running

a marathon – we may think we are dealing directly with time but all

we are doing, Bergson argues by means of a clock, is comparing two

spatial movements with each other; the locomotion of the runner to

the locomotion of the revolving earth. The lived experience of time

falls out of this equation.

Bergson is trying to think of time as a duration. Duration as he sees

it involves a kind of flow; a flux; an interpretation of the different

elements that make up time. We can’t think of time as discreet

components like seconds, minutes or hours. These are just spatial

markers. They mark time but they don’t account for the passing of

time. There has to be a coexistence; an interpenetration of the past

and present, otherwise we can't account for the passage of time, we

just get time as a sort of linear movement.

Composite shadows are time experienced, or, as T S Eliot writes

in the Four Quartets:

‘Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.’

Alice Mumford July 2019

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Fine Rain / 2018

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

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Warm Midsummer, Polgrean / 2018–2019

Oil on canvas

100 x 100 cm

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Mirror and Still Life / 2018

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

Violet, Blue Shadows / 2019

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

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Winter Light onRosevidney Fields / 2019

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

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After Bonnard, Composite Shadows I

Oil on board

36 x 25 cm

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The Dresser / 2018

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

10

Doors Open on First WarmDay, Polgrean / 2018

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

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Sunlight on WhiteCotton Curtain / 2019

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

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Brightness after Rain / 2019

Oil on canvas

61 x 51 cm

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Sunshine and Rain / 2019

Oil on canvas

61 x 51 cm

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The Jumpy Yellow Cloth / 2018

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

15

Rosehips, Winter Light / 2019

Oil on canvas

70 x 70 cm

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Peaches and Pink / 2019

Oil on canvas

41 x 56 cm

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Roses and Peaches / 2018

Oil on canvas

60 x 60 cm

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Looking at a CookeryBook / 2019

Oil on canvas

51 x 61 cm

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Afternoon Shadows, LateSummer, Polgrean / 2019

Oil on canvas

51 x 61 cm

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Spring Day from insidethe Shed / 2019

Oil on canvas

25 x 30 cm

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The Sea View, Summer AfternoonLight, Perranuthnoe / 2017–2019

Oil on canvas

100 x 100 cm

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Cool Shade on a Very Hot Day / 2018

Oil on canvas

60 x 60 cm

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Emerald Shutters and Plums / 2018

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

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After Bonnard, Composite Shadows II

Oil on board

40 x 31 cm

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May Sunshine, St IvesSchool of Painting / 2018

Oil on board

81 x 61 cm

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Pink and Violet Grey / 2019

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

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The Pink Chair / 2018

Oil on board

81 x 61 cm

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View of Portscatho toDodman Point / 2019

Oil on canvas

46 x 35 cm

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Stormy Sea, Portscatho / 2019

Oil on canvas

25 x 30 cm

Silver Roofs, Portscatho / 2019

Oil on canvas

25 x 30 cm

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The Turquoise Jug / 2019

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

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Green Shuttersand Lilies / 2018

Oil on canvas laid on board

71 x 91 cm

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Contre-jour, St Ives Harbour / 2015

Oil on board

18 x 23 cm

St Ives Harbour / 2015

Oil on board

18 x 23 cm

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Intense Midday Heat inJuly, Polgrean / 2018

Oil on canvas

75 x 90 cm

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Along from the KingHarry Ferry / 2018

Oil on board

18 x 28 cm

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Cider and Melon Pieceson a Hot June Day / 2018

Oil on canvas

61 x 76 cm

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80% Warm / 2019

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

Black and Pink / 2019

Oil on board

20 x 30 cm

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The Window Upstairs, Polgrean

Oil on canvas

71 x 91 cm

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Alice Mumford RWABorn: 1965 / Columbia

Studied: Dartington Hall 1979–1982

Southwark College of Art and Design 1982–1984

Camberwell School of Art 1984–1987

Falmouth College of Art 1995

Teaching life drawing and painting at

St. Ives School of Painting since 2001

Elected an academician at the RWA, 2010

One person exhibitions

2019 Composite Shadows, Belgrave St Ives

2018 The David Simon Contemporary Award, David Simon Gallery, Bath

2017 Strategic Colour, Belgrave St Ives

2015 Silver Light, Piers Feetham Gallery, London

Colour from Coast to Coast, Belgrave St Ives

2013 First Light, Belgrave St Ives

2011 Taste It, Belgrave St Ives

2008 Jumpy Yellow, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn

2007  Big Family – Still Life, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

2006 Featured Artist, Caroline Wiseman, London

Alice Mumford–Recent Work, The Great Atlantic Map Works, Falmouth

2005 Alice Mumford, Belgrave Gallery, London 

Summer and Autumn, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn

2004 Alice Mumford, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn

2003 Intimate Interiors & Favourite Objects,

Julian Lax, London

2001 Alice Mumford, Cobra and Bellamy, London

Selected mixed exhibitions

2019 Summer Show, Belgrave St Ives

2018 Summer Show, Belgrave St Ives

Winter Exhibition, Belgrave St Ives

2017 Table Talk, Piers Feetham Gallery, London

2015 Summer Show, Belgrave St Ives

2014 Summer Show, Belgrave St Ives

2013 Yuletide: Modern & Contemporary Art & Design,

St Ives Summer Exhibition, Belgrave St Ives

2012 IMS Auction, Christies, London

RWA Open Exhibition, Bristol

2011 Winter Exhibition: Paintings & 3D Works by

Fifty Contemporary Artists, Belgrave St Ives

Stoneman Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall

Josie Eastwood Fine Art, Winchester

2010 MMXMAS, Belgrave St Ives

Josie Eastwood Fine Art, Winchester

Works on Paper Art Fair, The Royal College of Art, London

2009 Three Representational Painters, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

Josie Eastwood Fine Art, Winchester

British Art Fair, London

New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition, The Mall Galleries, London

2008 Cornish Painting – A Family Quartet,

Piers Feetham Gallery, London

Josie Eastwood Fine Art, Winchester

British Art Fair, London

2007 St. Ives – Selected Artists, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

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A Postcard From St Ives, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives 

Badcocks at Easter, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn

2006 New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition,

The Mall Galleries, London

The Cornish Connection, Belgrave Gallery London 

Places and Spaces, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives 

Christmas Exhibition, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

2005 From St. Ives To Newlyn, Caroline Wiseman, London

Inner Light, The Great Atlantic Map Works, St. Just

Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn

2004 The New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition,

Mall Galleries, London

St. Ives, The Human Figure and Landscape

Julian Lax, London

2003 Winter Miscellany, Julian Lax, London

Rainyday Gallery, Penzance

2002 Aldborough Festival, Piers Feetham Gallery

Rainyday Gallery, Penzance

2001 Cobra and Bellamy, London

Publications

2018 Painting in St Ives: Be inspired by the artists that paint in this

famous artists' colony, Article, Artists & Illustrators Magazine

2017 Strategic Colour, Catalogue Essay, Dr. Ian Massey, Belgrave St Ives

Strategic Colour, Exhibition Preview, Pip Palmer, Galleries Magazine

2016 Colour From Coast to Coast, Book Review, Henry Malt,

The Artist Magazine

2015 Colour from Coast to Coast, Monograph, Dr. Ian Massey,

Sansom & Company

Colour from Coast to Coast, Exhibition Preview,

Nicholas Usherwood, Galleries Magazine

Colour from Coast to Coast, Book Review, Cornish World Magazine

2014 Buying art: In the Frame, Contemporary Still Life,

Feature, House and Garden Magazine

Alice Mumford, Feature, Country Life Magazine

2013 First Light, Catalogue Essay, Richard Selby, Belgrave St Ives

Silver Light, Catalogue Essay, Anthony Eyton RA, Piers Feetham Gallery

Alice Mumford, Feature, Cornwall Today

2012 Five of the Best, Article, The Cornishman

Learning from Bonnard, Feature, Artists and Illustrators

Sophie Conran Q&A, Article, Home & Antiques Magazine

2010 Colour Blast, Catalogue Essay, Michael Bird, Badcocks Gallery

2010 Colour and Charm, Feature, Country Living

2009 It All Started with a Table, Feature, Good Housekeeping

2008 An Engagement with Life, Feature, Cornwall Today

2007 Big Family –Still Life, Catalogue Essay, Peter Davies,

Belgrave Gallery St Ives

St Ives 1975 –2005: Art Colony in Transition, Included Artist,

Peter Davies, St Ives Printing & Publishing Company

Painter’s Palette, Article, Create Your Own Country Home,

Country Living Magazine

2004 A Room with a View, from the Prosaic to the Dramatic,

Feature, Inside Cornwall

2003 The Art of Patience, Feature, The Lady

A New Camberwell Talent, The Antiques Trade Gazette