Eat, Paint, Sleep

Carl Laubin's latest exhibition 'Eat, Paint, Sleep' at Plus One Gallery showed in June 2011. 

Carl Laubin, Vanbrugh Fields
122x198cm, oil on canvas 2011

Carl Laubin is an artist, but was formerly an architect, which comes across clearly in his draughtmanship and creativity when composing capricci or imaginary landscapes. Good examples of this are two of the works that were in the show, Vanbrugh Fields and Vanbrugh's Castles, paintings celebrating the buildings of Sir John Vanbrugh.

Carl says;

'I decided as long ago as 1996, when I painted a capriccio of different aspects of Castle Howard and began a painting of Nicholas Hawksmoor's buildings which would take four years to complete, that at some point I would produce a painting of Sir John Vanbrugh's designs. Having painted tributes to Hawksmoor and Sir Christopher Wren, it could only be a matter of time before this third great English Baroque architect became the subject of a painting. The two capricci, Vanbrugh Fields and Vanbrugh's Castles, depicting the majority of Vanbrugh's buildings and projects formed the core of this exhibition.'

'Vanbrugh's interest in medieval and military architecture led me naturally to compositions which grouped his designs into imagined hill towns suitable to Vanbrugh's particularly romantic vision of architecture, complete with fortifications built from the bastions he designed for the landscape at Castle Howard. Both paintings are entered via Vanbrugh's bridge at Blenheim, as originally designed with the arcaded superstructure which was never built and showing the lowest storey later obscured when the water level of the valley was raised by Capability Brown. This sense of entering is reinforced in Vanbrugh Fields by including the Pyramid Gate from Castle Howard in the approach to the bridge, the pyramid symbolizing passage from one world to another.'

Carl Laubin, Vanbrugh's Castles
oil on canvas, 2011

'Much of Vanbrugh's work exists only on paper, many projects having never been built, designs altered or structures demolished for a variety of reasons including changes in architectural taste; 'Lie heavy on him earth, for he hath laid many a heavy load on you'. Consequently, Vanbrugh Fields, and Vanbrugh's Castles, depict a number of structures which do not exist today. As with the bridge at Blenheim, Castle Howard is shown as it appears in drawings, completed symmetrically, and in Vanbrugh Fields, with the grand entrance gateways, which no longer exist, shown in front of the house as they are depicted in Vitruvius Britannicus and in a sketch by Vanbrugh.'

'The demolished house at Eastbury Park is depicted as it was built and also in the form of an earlier design illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus. This seemed an appropriate approach to depicting a design which went through numerous alterations and developments before arriving at its final form, only to be demolished a mere half century after its completion.'

Aptly the exhibition contained some of the working drawings of Carl's layouts and experimentations that do not necessarily appear in the final Vanbrugh paintings. The compositions of his Capricci are a complex process in themselves so it is interesting to see them, and therefore his thought process, alongside of the final works.

Carl Laubin, sketch for Vanbrugh's Castles

As Carl mentions above, the initial idea for these paintings came to him in 1996, but the serious research and visits to the Vanbrugh sites began in May 2010. It was then another two months of draughting and redraughting the imaginary landscapes before the painting began. Even then, it is not a smooth process - sometimes the composition needs to change with the transition from drawing to painting. Throughout the process of painting, changes are also continuously made.This series of photographs of Vanbrugh's Castles shows the progress made whilst building up the painting from sketch through to final work:

As the painting developed, certain problems of composition and scale became apparent. For instance, Carl felt that   the Temple of the Four Winds from Castle Howard, in the right foreground, didn’t look quite right there.

 It was removed to the middle ground and replaced by the demolished Bagnio from Eastbury.

But this in turn seemed to reduce the depth of the composition as more detail was added. 

Experimenting with a less prominent version of the Temple of the Four Winds sketched onto an acetate overlay, Carl found a better place for it further down in the lower right corner. This also gave the Blenheim Bridge more breathing space.

This series of photographs of the painting's progression were depicted as a short film within the exhibition.

Works still available:

Please see below the paintings and studies still available for sale from the exhibition. Carl explains;

'Other works in this show either resulted from visits to Vanbrugh's buildings, a statue that caught the eye, a crumbling wall; or have nothing to do with Vanbrugh but were produced as a diversion from the intense involvement demanded by the capricci.'

Round Bastion, Castle Howard
35 x 25cm, oil on canvas, 2011

The Last Bastion
107x71cm, oil on canvas, 2011



From the Last Bastion to Hawksmoor's Pyramid
71 x 107cm, Oil on Canvas, 2011

Bath Circus
78 x 122cm, Oil on Canvas, 2011

Leprose, Crustose and Foliose Lichens at Appuldurcombe
70 x 96cm, oil on canvas, 2011

Old Buoy
122x122cm, oil on canvas, 2010

Putto, Seaton Delaval
30x30cm, oil on canvas, 2010

Stables, Seaton Delaval
 40x50cm, oil on canvas, 2011

Staircase, Seaton Delaval
 61x45cm, oil on canvas, 2011

 Prices and further information are available direct from the artist, email: carl@carllaubin.com

This exhibition was reviewed by Country Life Magazine, in an article written by Jeremy Musson, June 15th, 2011, p.126-7:

www.carllaubin.com