Call of the city

Exeter, England

In an abandoned church hall in this university town, John Virtue packed up his brushes, canvases and notebooks, preparing to leave his small (and cold) studio of several years. A short, sturdy 55-year-old who paints monumental black-and-white landscapes, Virtue was moving into the National Gallery in London, one of the most prestigious and visited museums in the world.

With an invitation to be its associate artist came a bright, custom-built studio inside the gallery, unlimited access to one of the great collections of European art and, after two years, a show there. For an artist, it was a dream come true. And Virtue was terrified. Not only was he to work alongside some of his “hero paintings” by Rubens, Constable and Turner, but he was leaving his subject of seven years, the river Exe, and a self-imposed retreat.

“It’s really frightening,” Virtue said as he sat on a little chair in his studio, getting ready for the movers to pick up the last canvases that surrounded him in stacks against the walls. “One doesn’t just waltz in there and start painting.”

The painter, whose work is currently on show at the L.A. Louver gallery, had moved to Exeter, a three-hour train ride southwest of London, in part to escape the distractions of “the art world.” Now, he was moving to its center.

A strict routine

Virtue is an unapologetic obsessive. “The really great stuff comes out of compulsion,” he said. But compulsion must be tamed through ritual, and every week for five years, he followed the same schedule: one day of drawing, six days of painting.

On Thursday mornings, his pockets bulging with notebooks, he walked from his house through the low-lying landscape to the mouth of the river. The scenery became increasingly familiar as he sketched the sky, trees and water again and again, in hundreds of drawings at a time. During each walk, he filled five or six notebooks, charging them with his impressions. At times, rain or snow soaked through his clothes and the sketches, making the ink run. But Virtue would keep drawing.

Back in his small studio, Virtue spent the rest of the week translating drawings into paintings. Using a variety of tools -- gardening and kitchen equipment, spatulas, syringes, calligraphy brushes and rags -- he poured, threw, dripped and brushed ink, shellac and acrylic paint onto the large canvases, creating monochromatic landscapes of vast depth and light.

No narrative, no title

One afternoon shortly before his move to London in January, Virtue dragged a dozen paintings into the main church hall, only his feet visible beneath the large frames. Panting, he rested them against the walls. As bleak winter sun filtered through the tall windows, Virtue looked at his last paintings of the River Exe.

Each incorporates the same figurative element: the spire of All Saints Church. This architectural marker holds the painting together, fixing the horizon. Despite his repeated use of it, Virtue is ambivalent about the spire, insisting that nothing should be read into it. There is no narrative, he said, a point underscored by his refusal to title the paintings. They are simply numbered. The ideal, he said, is to create “a Turin shroud of nature.”

About 25 years ago, Virtue abandoned pigment, saying he felt nauseated, physically and intellectually, by color. With black and white, he found he was better able to evoke light.

“This,” he said, gesturing toward the canvases, “is color to me.” His paintings are devoid of color, yet full of weather and seasons.

Tate Britain owns Virtue’s work. The British Museum has bought some of his sketchbooks. Although he is not as well known in the United States, his paintings are in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Virtue’s physical method of painting may evoke that of Jackson Pollock. But unlike the Abstract Expressionist, Virtue records an experience of a landscape, merging interior and exterior, abstract and figurative. For him, landscapes are neither quaint nor archaic, but valid contemporary subject matter. He competes with J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, appropriating gestures from both Pollock and Zen calligraphy. He wants to “rub against” their paintings but make something new.

“You might get lucky and -- who knows? -- maybe make an image that will last.”

By invitation only

For Virtue, it’s been a long journey to the National Gallery. Educated at Slade School of Fine Art in London, he taught for a while before taking a job as a postman to support his painting. These days, the art supports itself. It is the fulfillment of an ambition “to make something rather than be something.”

But Virtue has also become something. To be named an associate artist at the museum he visited as a teenager, studying the masters, is an apex of artistic aspiration, he said.

The position is by invitation only, and museum officials spend months debating their selection. The idea, said Colin Wiggins, head of the education department and the associate artist program, is to show visitors that the paintings in the galleries are not dead but “in conversation” with modern art. Previous artists have used their time at the museum, between two and three years, in different ways. Ron Mueck found inspiration in paintings of the Madonna and child, creating a series of pregnant sculptures. Paula Rego, the first artist in residence, opened her studio to the public, making visitors a part of her paintings.

Virtue’s new work will go on show there in 2005.

Risking failure

On this midwinter day, Virtue’s mood vacillated between anxiety and anticipation. “Stasis is death,” he said. “As an artist, you have to move forward or you die.”

English artist Frank Auerbach, who follows Virtue’s work, wrote in the foreword to a 1999 exhibition catalog: “He is always forging ahead, I am impressed by (the word is unavoidable) his heroism.”

By going to London, Virtue knew he risked failing on a grand scale. A few weeks later, he had made the move. Arriving at his new studio in the National Gallery, he asked himself, “Where has this dreadful hubris led you?”

In a recent phone call, he assessed the work so far: “I started on one image that looks promising,” he said. “We’ll see. It may be a real disaster.”

He was walking along a different river. On the coldest day in a decade, he found himself caught in a snowstorm by the Thames. He took refuge under the Waterloo bridge. He began to draw.

*

Virtue in L.A.

What: “John Virtue: The Last Paintings of the River Exe, 2000-2002”

Where: L.A. Louver gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice

When: Through Feb. 22

Contact: (310) 822-4955