Local Artist Profile :

Stan Rosenthal

Internationally acclaimed artist Stan Rosenthal has immortalised many familiar scenes in Hastings and along the south coast. His inimitable style is instantly
recognisable – and much loved. He exhibited with Marc Chagall and Sir Jacob Epstein and is Artist in Residence for Pembrokeshire. But when you visit his informal gallery in Battle, it’s hard to equate this modest, friendly man with an artist of such renown.

Have you always been an artist?

I wanted to be an artist from the age of nine, when I was evacuated in Battle during the war. It was actually the very house I’m living in now. I remember I was homesick and upset, and my foster father started drawing to cheer me up: an elephant and a map of England. I was amazed and fascinated by what was coming out of his pencil. I left school at 14 and went to art college, but at 19 I had an eye injury. The doctor told me I must stop drawing and painting to save my sight, so I never questioned it – I just stopped, for 23 years. In the meantime, I became a psychologist, through accident really. When I was due for conscription, but objected to fighting in the war in Korea so went up before a panel. A doctor noticed I had an interest in psychology and asked if I would do something of social benefit for two years instead of fighting. So that’s when I became a psychiatric nurse, caring for soldiers from the First World War. There were 90 men suffering from ‘general paralysis of the insane’ as it was known, the effects of syphilis contracted during the war. After that, I studied psychology in Wales, and eventually became Senior Research Fellow at the National School of Medicine.

It wasn’t until I decided to see a doctor about my eye that I discovered the error of communication that paused my career as an artist for 23 years. It was fine – I could go ahead and paint, no damage would be done. And what the doctor had probably meant was that I should stop painting for a few months while the eye healed, not for the rest of my life. I felt for a long time I’d been robbed of those years, but now I don’t.
I gained a lot of experience in that time, too.

What’s the story behind your new book: How Art Happens?

It’s an 80-page book on the theory of art, something I’ve been thinking about for years. It stems from my experience as a psychologist and my interest in how images are translated onto paper. Artists work intuitively, but it’s possible to turn-on that intuitive part of your brain on request. It’s done through ‘creative dreaming’, a state of mind similar to that between wake and sleep, the most creative state of all. It’s like carrying around a mental sketchbook, pencil and eraser, and imagining an image appear on paper, making changes to the bits you’re not happy with. The picture you’re left with is the image that makes a work of art. The state of creative dreaming is similar to that we fall into when we are doing something automatically, like driving,. It’s much more common in children than adults. There have been many studies, including those by a professor – Semir Zeki – which show there’s a part of the brain (called the orbito frontal cortex) that is activated by beauty. I’ve discussed the subject at length with experts on neuro-science.

Where do you find inspiration?

I have never had to wonder what to paint. For me, the beauty that inspires my creative state is mostly in landscapes. 90% of my work is landscapes, with 50/50 West Wales and the south coast, from Hastings to Cornwall. Some people paint from their imagination or memory, but I need a percept – a visual image – as a starting part. Even an abstract begins with an image, which means it’s not really an abstract because I leave things out and enhance what’s left, so it’s a distillation. I liken it to a Mohican haircut: it’s not the hair that remains that makes it a Mohican, it’s the fact the rest is taken away.

Self Portrait, abstract

Pushing the Boat Out

Collage: The Stade

Do painting and writing go together?

Yes, I enjoy both. I tend to paint during the day, then I’m up until 2 or 3am writing. While I’m painting, I’m always aware of what’s happening in my brain.

What are your current projects and plans for
the future?

The picture I recently finished was a self-portrait in oils. Other than my book, I’m working on a painting of De Le Warr Pavillion in a new style, which is distillation resulting in a simplified picture. It uses reflections in the glass and an interesting combination of shapes and colours. I’m also reworking some old paintings – one of Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower Peninsula, and another called Poppies, which I painted 30 years ago. As for future, I am looking for a college or professor who can deal with the disciplines addressed in my book, which I will start rewriting.

Stan’s book How Art Happens is available in
time for Christmas from his gallery in Battle