duggie fields

MERMAID acryl on canvas 202 x 152 cm.
Duggie Fields and Dorte Philipsen from Galleri Gl. Lejre.
Don’t miss the solo exhibition at
Galleri Gl. Lejre 6. Sep. – 12. Oct. 2008.
Preview 6. Sep. 2 pm – 5 pm.
Hope to see you
Dorte and Torben Philipsen
Orehøjvej 1A, DK-4320 Lejre, Denmark, phone: +45 46 48 04 86, www.galleri-gl-lejre.dk
Opening hours thursday, friday, saturday and sunday 1pm - 5pm – or by appointment.
duggie fields
Identity and self
Sometime in the late 1950s I discovered my connection with the act of
painting. Having moved from the country to the city, the mid ‘60s saw
me at Chelsea Art School just off the King’s Road in the heady days
of Swinging London, after a brief encounter with Architecture at the
Regent Street Polytechnic, where amongst others I’d met the nascent
Pink Floyd. By the early ‘70s I found myself sharing a flat with founder
and former lead singer Syd Barrett, the home/studio I’ve occupied on
my own ever since. In the ‘80s, somehow I became briefly a reflection of
my own earliest form of received iconography, the discarded cosmetics
displays from my parent’s pharmacy storeroom where many hours were
spent playing as a child, when I was featured on similar products myself
in Japan. In the ‘90s I discovered the digital medium; my workspace
expanded from the confines of the studio into the virtual world. Making
imagery still always the main occupation, hours spent chasing line, form,
colour and content; solitarily, obsessively, demonically, joyously, neurotically, irrationally, hopelessly, devotedly, delightedly.
Duggie Fields 1945Painter in acrylic on canvas, born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, brought up in Tidworth, who attended Chelsea School of art, 1964-8, after briefly studying
architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic. Teachers included John Hoyland,
Ian Stephenson, Lawrence Gowing, Allen Jones, Patrick Caulfield and Bernard
Cohen. As a student his work moved from Minimal, Conceptual and Constructivist phases to a more hard-edge, post- Pop figuration. After he had visited
America for the first time in 1968, Fields said that ‘my perspective on life was
never the same.’ By the mid-1970s his work included many elements that were
later defined as Post-Modernism. In 1983 in Tokyo, sponsored by the Shiseido
Corporation, a gallery was created especially for his show, and the artist and
his work were simultaneously featured in a television, billboard and subway
advertising campaign throughout the country. In London Fields lived in a flat
that reflected the 1950s-1960s, wore makeup and a Teddy-boy haircut. Mixed
shows included Fashion and Surrealism, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1988. Had
a solo show at Hamet Gallery, 1971, later ones including Albermarle Gallery,
1987, and Rempire Gallery, New York 1990, Arts Council holds his work, which
had wide international press and television documentary coverage.
From »Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945« by David Buckman