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Selected articles in the Press
1997
‘James Gillick is a young painter of great promise. He is the son of the celebrated social critic Victoria Gillick, cousin to the 2002 Turner prize nominee, Liam Gillick, and comes from a long line of artists and artisans that have been adding to the cultural fabric of the British Isles in a significant fashion for a century.
Since his first year of exhibitions in 1995, James has been consistently sought by dealers and clients for the wide range of genres he embraces: still life, figure painting, portraiture, large scale commissions, drawings in chalk and small prints. His work now hangs in private collections and places of worship across Britain.
Intellectually James' art is free from the constraints of a poor technique. His facility does not prompt him toward stylistic idiosyncrasies. The paintings and drawings he makes are the uncluttered expression of a developing contemporary mind and its vision of the world in all its beauty and sobriety. Bold in composition and demanding in its observation of atmosphere, the effect of his imagery upon the viewer is immediate. One is compelled to partake in his view, urged to see as he sees, such is the assuredness and simplicity with which he expresses his understanding of things. His opinion rests with his subject matter. Not political and seldom attracted to flighty subjects, James uses his rich toned palette to extol the dignity of everyday objects and people, elevating the mundane and imbuing a quiet and strong sense of life in his work. Given the potential he displays, James Gillick stands to become a recognizable figure among the painters of the twenty-first century.’
1998
Art Review
‘Like just about every other dignitary since the death of Singer Sargent, Mrs Thatcher has been badly served by portrait painters. When she was still in office there was a regal rumpus over Rodrigo Moynihan's portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery, which had to be re-painted because the PM looked as though she'd been through a car windscreen at high speed and had her face reconstructed by Peter Cushing; and the less said about the chocolate box Gothic effort of Sergei Chepik's 1993portrait the better. A new portrait, by James Gillick (b. 1972), has been unveiled to commemorate her tenure, recently ended, as Chancellor of Buckingham University, and it is the best to date. It looks appropriately ceremonial and formal, although the face, a passable likeness, looks as rigidly impassive and serious as if the sitter were a martyr in a Byzantine icon, indeed the Iron Lady looks as remote as does Queen Elizabeth I in her portraits. Gillick's is, nevertheless, a painting in which respect and the gentlest satire have established some sort of working relationship.’
Baroness Thatcher
"A kind portrait of me in the way I would like to be remembered."
2007
Gabriele Finaldi, Museo del Prado
‘Painting, which for Horace was visual poetry, has a curiously silent but deeply expressive sub-genre: the still life. Everyone knows that paintings do not make much noise - mostly none at all - but still lifes have a special inclination to speak in long pauses, punctuated by acute silences and occasional moments of hush. They tend by means of a thoughtful lack of urgency towards a meditative stillness. As a general rule, a melon, a cardoon, a spray of carnations or an earthenware pot do not move while being painted; they do not have to be entertained like a human sitter who might otherwise end up looking melancholy in the finished portrait (that was Leonardo's concern), nor can they complain that the likeness is not quite right, the skin of the onion too papery, the shadows of the plate lopsided, or the glass insufficiently transparent. Instead, they just sit there, confronted only by the intense scrutiny of the painter's eye that looks and thinks, looks and thinks, and then decides.
Annibale Carracci chided his loquacious brother, Agostino, for talking too much with his poet and writer friends: "We painters have to speak with our brushes", was his solemn rebuke. The Neapolitan, Salvator Rosa, portrayed himself as a weeping philosopher holding a tablet with a Latin epigram: "Either be silent, or speak only if your speech is better than silence", and Velázquez, whose bodegones are above all about silent contemplation, inscribed one of his portraits with a verse from the Book of Lamentations: "It is good that a man should both hope and wait in silence for the salvation of the Lord". Velázquez was described by contemporaries as phlegmatic, and he was probably taciturn. But his artistic eloquence is evident in the way he paints the white of an egg about to coagulate in a clay dish, or the bent shadow of a knife on the inside of a white ceramic plate, or the swollen, pregnant, belly of a large water jar.
With the great still-life painters, from Caravaggio to Chardin, from Stoskopff to Juan Gris, objects, which are silent, begin to speak. Zurbarán's vessels, whether the artist intended it or not, bespeak devotion, "like flowers on an altar, strung together like litanies to the Madonna", said the Italian critic, Roberto Longhi. When Cardinal Federico Borromeo, cousin of the saintly Charles, looked upon the flower paintings he commissioned from Jan Breughel his mind turned to reflecting joyfully on the wonders of the created world. Cézanne saw in the simple forms of apples, pears and wooden boxes the means by which to negotiate a new relationship with the world around him, while in the hands of Picasso, the newspaper and the tobacco pipe became volatile explosive charges primed to detonate the very language of art. Some years ago Professor Gombrich spoke out to remind us of something that we all secretly knew: every still life is, by its very nature, a vanitas, replete with transience, manifesting silent intimations of mortality.
James Gillick's painting belongs to a venerable tradition. An art historian cannot help but sense in his works the distinguished genealogy of William Nicholson, Morandi and Fantin-Latour, and hear echoes that reach back to Luis Meléndez and beyond. He labours with the infinite care of a devout craftsman, preparing his own linen-covered panels and lovingly making his own paints and varnishes. Then he settles down to confront the silence of the simple motifs he paints, a silver coffee pot, a leather case, a glass vase, the everyday objects that accompany us in our allotted time, rich in personal associations but meaningful beyond the immediate domestic context. There are flashes of genuine painterly virtuosity: the jagged reflection on the surface of a metal container, the stain left by a wet mussel, the downy softness of the breast of a dead bird. These too, form an integral part of the tradition of still life and mimesis. James Gillick's paintings are silent works that speak.’
2009
St Austin Review
‘Nowadays Art is wedded to Modernisms’ very fundamentals. Haven’t the most influential men in the contemporary art scene (Picasso, Warhol, Hirst et al) made a virtue of outsourcing all their fabrication of artwork into factories, producing work just as Mr Ford’s non-skilled line men produced the Model T? By contrast, every figurative painting, but especially the ‘painting of light’ from life, is intrinsically a positive counter-move to this anti-cultural ideology. It combines the whole mind and body of a person into producing a thing of excellence, immersing the human in a higher contemplation of the tangible world. Of course it is not a perfect response to Modernism, or a complete one but fine painting as an activity goes towards re-establishing the artist and viewer as dignified creatures in harmony with a beautiful world.’
Painting Light’, January/February 2009
Fieldsports Magazine
‘I admire James as a master painter, a draughtsman equally at ease with the brush or the pencil. He works in silence in a deep and concentrated calm. His works are poised and rich. They lure one with great painterly technique. On scrutiny the glint in a picture will be a precise scrub and twist of pure white pigment, fixing with a flick of the wrist the light on the edge of a glass. As a rider, I look at his large horse studies with awe: they are breathtaking. Not in the sense that they are perfected versions of reality but because they represent real horses with their habitual stance and mood and with that truthful look in their eye.’
‘Art for Always’, Spring 2009
Lincolnshire Pride Magazine
“A fine painting made in a world of quick-fit solutions is an anomaly – it is a lasting pleasure and a slow burning joy.”
‘The Art of Horses’, August 2009
2011
The Jackdaw, January/February
Lincolnshire Life, June
Leisure Painter, July
Artists & Illustrators, July
2010
Equestrian Life, April ‘Meet James Gillick: Putting the Life into Life-size’
The Field,November
The Jackdaw, November/December
The Sporting Shooter, December
2009
The Saint Austin Review, Jan/Feb ‘Painting Light’
Fieldsports, Spring ‘Art for Always’
The Catholic Herald, April
Country Life, May Pick of the Week
Leisure Painter, June
Artists & Illustrators, July ‘Seeing the Light’
The Field, July
Lincolnshire Pride, August ‘The Art of Horses’
The Journal for Lincolnshire, October ‘Brush strokes of beauty and pure genius’
2008
Artists & Illustrators Artist of the Year 2008, Still Life Category
2007
Artists and Illustrators, February ‘The shock of the old’
Artists and Illustrators, March ‘My Studio’
Sporting Shooter, April 2007 (feature article)
Shooting Gazette, Nov 2007 ‘The Interpreter’
2006
Leisure Painter ‘Today’s Artists: James Gillick’
2005
Catholic News
Our Sunday Visitor (USA) (feature article)
The Tablet
Scottish Shooting Gazette (feature article)
Sporting Shooter ‘Painting Against the Clock’
Shooting Gazette (feature article)
2004
Catholic Herald
Catholic Times
The Field ‘Artists in the Field: Theodore and James Gillick’
The Saint Austin Review (July/Aug ‘David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge’ and Sept/ Oct issues)
Scottish Sporting Gazette
Sporting Shooter Magazine
1999
Daily Telegraph
1998
Daily Telegraph
Guardian
Independent on Sunday
The Mail On Sunday
The Mirror
Telegraph
The Times (twice)
Glasgow Herald
Guardian Liverpool Echo
Manchester Daily press
Western Daily Press
Liverpool Echo
Edinburgh Evening News
Eastern Daily Press
Wigan Evening Post
Daily Post - Liverpool
The Scotsman – Edinburgh
Lancashire Evening Post - Preston
Birmingham Post
Press and Journal - Aberdeen
Yorkshire Post - Leeds
Worcester Evening News
Coventry Evening Telegraph
The Sentinel - Stoke-on-Trent
Northampton Chronicle and Echo
Dorset Evening Echo
Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph
Grimsby Evening Telegraph
Reading Evening Post
East Anglian Daily Times
Ottawa Sun
BBC World Service
Various Local BBC Radio Programmes
