Red Flowers
Oil on canvas, irca 1970
32 x 21.5 cm
Private Collection
Joash Woodrow Still Life Paintings: A Unique Approach to Texture and Composition
Joash Woodrow’s Still Life paintings from the 1960s and early 1970s are some of his most beautiful and lyrical works, yet they remain surprisingly underexplored. These paintings mark a significant shift in his artistic style, moving toward semi-abstract still lifes that emphasise texture, surface quality, and dynamic composition.
During this period, Woodrow experimented with different materials and painting techniques, showing a playful yet sophisticated approach to composition. He moved away from the broad brushstrokes and flattened space seen in his landscape paintings, instead focusing on the dynamics between form, texture, and colour.
This fusion of contrasting spaces demonstrates Woodrow’s sophistication in visual expression, and his works stand out for their unique combination of realism and abstraction, a rare feature in post-war British art.
The following excerpt from the Joash Woodrow Monograph (2004) by Nicholas Usherwood and Christopher Wood provides valuable insight into his still life works:
“Somewhere towards the end of this period Joash, still using the same broad brushstrokes and flattened pictorial space used in the landscapes, also seems to have started a series of luminous, semi-abstract still-life’s. In these works he seems more concerned with the actual surface quality of the paintings and, while still using the same kind of sackcloth sewn together as a support, he starts exploring, in an almost playful manner, the dynamics of composition and materials to produce some startlingly original works. For example, is extraordinary for the sheer range of devices Joash employed to apply paint; as well as a wide number of specialist and commercially available brushes, he improvises with scrapers, squeegee’s and uses the handles of his brushes to scrape through the congealing paint…”
