Hawksmoor and Golden Wonder

Jock McFadyen

DESCRIPTION

Hawksmoor and Golden Wonder by Jock McFadyen (b. 1950) portrays a white dog in a cartoon style, amongst a muddy area with a bag of 'Golden Wonder' crisps on the right bottom corner. In the background is a white building with pillars, possibly a church or a school. McFadyen employs a drier brush technique with the dog to create the texture of its fur. An abstract element is also present with the red and black swirls in the lower landscape surrounding the dog. The cartoon element with the dog's oversized head gives the sense of a child's drawing, but then is elevated to a serious nature with the surrounding litter and the slightly sad expression of the dog. 

McFadyen's work often contains cartoon elements, similar to children's drawings, placed within a more serious setting, as seen here through the elements of caricature with the dog. His focus is often on cityscapes, with elements in this piece from the litter of the Golden Wonder crisps. 

DETAILS
  • Artist

    Jock McFadyen

  • Date

    c.1988

  • Medium

    Oil and collage on canvas

  • Object number

    585

  • Dimensions unframed

    86.5 × 96.5 cm

  • Dimensions framed

    93 × 104 × 4.5 cm

  • Subject

    Animal

  • Copyright

    Ⓒ Jock McFadyen RA

ARTIST PROFILE

Jock McFadyen RA, born 1950

The childhood 'doodling' of Paisley-born McFadyen matured when he attended art classes at Glasgow School of Art on Saturday mornings shortly before he left school at fifteen. Although he continued with his art when he could, it was not until her was twenty-two that he enrolled at Chelsea School of Art in London, graduating in 1977. He was Artist-in-Residence at the National Gallery in London in 1981 - only the second artist to be so - and in 1990 he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record aspects of Berlin in the aftermath of the dismantling of the Wall.
McFadyen looks on his art as realism, but it is often not the 'comfortable' realism of, for example, the Glasgow Boys. He portrays life as it is, often depicting the seamier side of urban existence. He has made cities his study: first their inhabitants and now the cities themselves. His art has an affinity with the work of the German artists Gerge Grosz and Otto Dix, of Edward Burra and the American painter Edward Hopper. In British Art his heroes are Walter Sickert, L.S. Lowry and Michael Andrews. In much of McFadyen's work there is a large measure of caricature and not a little humour. However, it is a serious comment on the human condition.

OTHER WORKS