By Ian Burnell, long-time framer at the Crane Kalman Gallery
Ian Burnell worked for many years as the in-house fine art picture framer at the Crane Kalman Gallery in London. During that time, he worked closely with the gallery’s founder and director, Andras Kalman, in what became an unusually creative working relationship. Over the years, their collaboration shaped how paintings were framed and presented within the gallery.
During his time at Crane Kalman, Ian handled works by many of the leading 20th-century British, American, and European artists shown by the gallery - including Ben Nicholson, Graham Sutherland, L. S. Lowry, Winifred Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Mary Newcomb, Henry Moore, Matthew Smith, William Scott, Edward Burra, S. W. Hayter, Theodore Stamos, Joan Miró, and Alexander Calder.
Over the years, Ian also framed numerous paintings of mine, and came to know the work well. Recently, he shared these reflections with me. I found them so insightful and affirming that I wanted to share them with you too, with his kind permission.
Thoughts about the Paintings of Nick Jones (from 1995 to 2016)
Are visual artists blind, metaphorically speaking, I wonder? Are they looking for an underlying vision by painting over the blank canvas until they can see what they are searching for? There is something behind their colours, the forms, the shapes, the glazes.
Nick’s new work of this period included odd elements into his superficially calm observations, sometimes geometric and almost 3-dimensional. It was as if he was inviting enquiry by laying visual trip wires and elephant traps, much like Turner’s famous dabs of red paint, or the catchy riffs of popular music.
Painting pictures is a conjuring trick, including a little bit of magic.
Through the mastery of his craft he seemed to be reaching for what lies beyond, much like a medium connecting to another world. All this by manipulation of paint on canvas, seamlessly, without showing any brush work. That is nothing short of miraculous. With no clear vanishing points Nick created an apparent vapourous effect through transparent layers, removing the scales from our eyes as it were, introducing uncertainty to an imagined landscape.
A biographer writing about Mary Newcomb, another artist represented by Andras Kalman, had her manuscript thrown out many years ago because it was suggested that Mary was some kind of mystic, with her head in the clouds. This critic had in fact projected herself onto the image of Mary.
I wonder here if we now have an artist who does tinker with the boundaries of physical experience, making contact between the earthly and a world of spirits, of auras, of questions not answers.
Yet Nick is mediating not with mystery but with familiar spirits, possibly of aspirations, hopes, reflections. These are works of translation using marvellous techniques allowing us to see what is infinite, beyond definition. He is a facilitator of heightened sensibilities, sensing and representing energy in his painting.
Reading the clues in Nick’s titles his key words are of boundaries, transition, capture and movement, such as crossing, passing, skirting, the shore, the edge, the cloak. He even talks of lifting the veil, of smoke, of dreams glimpsed, about freezing air as in fixing moments in time. Air is made visible, as is space, and even time is suspended in Nick’s work. I feel something’s about to happen.
I was lucky enough 40 years ago to be invited by Andrew Nicholson to read the draft of his book compiled in honour of his mother, Winifred before publication. He invited any thoughts or comments I had to offer. I had just one: I didn’t like the title “Unknown Colour”. Now I see how fitting such a description might be. In the present case it might be “Unseen Visions”.
Postscript
Ian’s role at the Crane Kalman Gallery began in the early 1980s with the launch of Andras Kalman’s new gallery in Sloane Street - Crane Folk Art. Within weeks of starting, he suggested trying his hand at framing - an idea Andras welcomed enthusiastically. What began as an experiment quickly became a dedicated role, eventually evolving into a long-standing and highly valued framing practice within the gallery. Over time, this work became central to how the gallery presented and cared for its artists' work.