2. Aldo Balding / night + day
“If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still
have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on”
- Alfred Hitchcock.
Christopher Moller Gallery
3. Invented Light By Ashraf Jamal
Three painters have proved to be Aldo Balding’s greatest inspiration, the American John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), the Swede
Anders Zorn (1860-1920), and the Spaniard Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923). What is so striking is how their life spans coincide –
they belong to the same age, marred at its core by the ‘Great War’ the shocking consequence of which, as the anthropologist
James Clifford put it, would make the Western world permanently surreal. While Sargent, Zorn, and Sorolla were undoubtedly
affected by the war, their art seems to hold fast to a time before such brutal emotional and psychological devastation. They
remained, first and foremost, great painters of the inner workings of human beings. Capturing the truth of a being in an in-
stant required a deft and rapid touch. As Sorolla remarked, ‘I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly. Every effect is so
transient, it must be rapidly painted’.The most verbally articulate of Balding’s three great influences, Sorolla also scathingly
added that ‘when an artist begins to count strokes instead of regarding nature he is lost’. And it is this acute ‘regard’ for the
natural world – a world shaped profoundly by the human psyche – which Balding has placed at the epicentre of his process.
However to attain this depth of understanding of what it means to be human also requires an artistic challenge, the cap-
turing of the seemingly impossible – Light.Light is at the core of Balding’s paintings, a light as visceral as it is psycholog-
ical and metaphoric, a light which illuminates the world and banishes darkness. This seduction – the seduction of light
– is also central to the work of all Balding’s inspirational artists. Without light, life is hollowed out, plunged into darkness.
Without light, after Immanuel Kant, we cannot know ourselves, know others. The pursuit of light, therefore, is the reason for
the artist’s journey. The quest for light is the artist’s emotional and ethical crux. Therefore to ‘know’ Aldo Balding’s paint-
ings is to know the workings of light. Gaze upon any of Balding’s paintings and what immediately comes to the fore is a
light through which we recognise a sentient strength, a spirited well-being, a sense of a world which, while fragile and
stalked by threat, always harbours goodness and grace.As the American poet A.R. Ammons noted in his great poem ‘Cor-
son’s Inlet’: ‘Risk is full, every living thing in siege / the demand is life / to keep life’. It is this principle and will which inspires
Balding. And like Claude Monet and Joaquin Sorrolla he is well aware of the challenges that confront him in his attempt
to cherish all that is sentient and good about life. As Monet once remarked, painting does not contain enough light. So-
rolla concurred, stating that ‘We painters … can never reproduce light as it really is. We can only approach the truth of it’.
Key to Sorolla’s drive is aspiration: one aspires towards a truth; one finds the means in-and-through painting as an inspi-
rational act to capture that ever-evasive and tantalising truth. It is this very quest that has defined Aldo Balding’s vocation.
He is a man in search of what it means to be human – the enigmatic soul that gives us our personhood, the trust which
like an electrical force-field brings two beings together. Speed in the making of a painting is key to the capturing of these
elusive qualities; speed key to the harvesting of the most essential ingredient for the creation of this quest – light – a mat-
ter as present as it is insubstantial. It is therefore invented light that becomes the artist’s core obsession. And here what is
particularly striking about Balding’s understanding of and application of light is how elemental-yet-secular that under-
standing and use of light is. We see no stench of the church, no divine afterglow. Rather, Balding’s use of light as a medium
and a message is all too human. No sacred aura enfolds his beings; it is a beautiful and singular humanity that matters.
.
17. Day 4: Les Calanques - oil on canvas - 40 x 50 cm
18. Biography
Aldo Balding was born and raised in the United Kingdom and currently lives in Castelnaudary in the South of France. He started
off his career as an illustrator before moving to France to become a full-time artist. He is represented by a number of galleries
around the world, in countries such as the United Kingdom, United States ofAmerica, France and South Africa.There is a narra-
tive element to Balding’s work in which he sets up scenarios, with no specific outcome, leaving it up to the viewer to determine
what is going on. He believes that the way a person holds their body can say more about their feelings and intentions, than
words. His subtle use of space distortion creates a sense that something is amiss or is about to happen. Similar talents were
shown by the great black and white movie filmmakers (like Hitchcock) and there is a sense that many of his pictures could be
stills from a movie. Balding considers himself a storyteller, he takes an idea and moulds it to his liking; furthermore, the colours,
the figures, the scenery are all adjusted for the viewer based on what he wants them to see. Living in the South of France, he
likes to paint in direct sunlight. He prefers to be “stingy” in colour tones, using no more than five or six at any one time. The work
normally has a predominant tone or key to it, usually in the mid or dark range. This means that more than 50 percent of the
canvas is occupied by one or two closely related tones; this method has been used by great artists such as, Sargent, Sorolla,
Zorn and Munnings. Balding considers himself a tonalist painter, though colour is another tool he likes to employ to influence
mood. He looks for colour harmonies that already exist in the subject. He squints a lotwhen painting and this helps him to sim-
plify everything, see things within a hierarchy- the sharpest edge, the lightest part, the order of things that he is searching for.
His inspiration, ideas and subject matter can originate from something he has seen- a man in a café, a woman cross-
ing a street; or it can be an idea he has set up, where he has used a model, wearing something from his collection of
clothes ranging from the 1940’s to the present day. The models act out an idea in his studio or on location rather than
pose formally, which he then photographs during the ideas stage. He works quickly spending almost as much time
on the set-up and ideas as the painting itself. A mid-sized painting normally takes between 2 to 3 days in an ‘alla pri-
ma’* style as he tries to work sections at a time to keep the ** ‘wet-in-wet’ technique. One gets a sense of timeless-
ness with his work; he creates a sense of nostalgia, how it is human nature to look back at the past with a certain sense
of ease that life was simpler. His work has been strongly influenced by the likes of the early 20th
century romantic art-
ists such as John Singer Sargent (American 1856-1925), Anders Zorn (Swedish 1860 – 1920), and Joaquin Sorolla (Span-
ish 1863 –1923). ’Romanticism’ was the period where artists had the desire to see everything as larger than life, frequent-
ly expressed in bold colour, vigorous brushwork, and themes of love, death, heroism and the wonders of nature. Artists
turned away from the logical and rational, allowing themselves freedom to express raw, usually suppressed feelings.
It is these emotions expressed by Romanticism that Balding articulates in his work creating a fascinating mood,
through his use of movement, colour and drama. *Alla prima is a style of painting where instead of build-
ing colours up with layers or glazing over an under- painting, the painting is completed while the paint is still
wet. Strictly defined, an alla prima painting would be started and finished in one painting session, but the
term is also more loosely applied to any painting done in a direct expressive style, with minimal preparation
** Wet-in-wet is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. This tech-
nique requires a fast way of working, because the artwork has to be finished before the first layers have dried.
19. Awards:
Arc salon finalist 2004 , 2006.
NSE Exhibition first prize 2003.
Artist international first prize 2002.
Magazine Articles:
Pratique des art No 37 2015
Artists and Illustrators, Jan 2015
Artists and Illustrators Feb 2014
Art of England, March 2013
Artists and Illustrators, Sept 2010
Poets and Artists Magazine, August 2010
Artists and Illustrators Magazine, May, 2009
American Art Collector, November, 2008
Artist International (Issue 22) - Front Cover
Artist International (Issue 27) - 5 page feature
Artists and Illustrators - June/July 2003
Exhibitions:
Mixed exhibition Thompsons Gallery London 2015
Men Painting men Catto gallery, London 2015
Royal society of Portrait Painters 2014
Solo Exhibition _ Christopher Moller Art 2013
Solo Exhibition – Christopher Møller Art, 2011
Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition at Mall Galleries, 2011
Solo Exhibition – The Catto Gallery 2010
Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition at Mall Galleries, 2010
The Beauty of form, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2010
Royal Society of Portrait Painters Exhibition at Mall Galleries 2009
Great American figurative painters – Waterhouse Gallery, Santa Barbara 2009
The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries 2009
Christopher Møller Art, Cape Town, South Africa 2009
Great American Figure Painters Exhibition – Waterhouse Gallery, Santa Barbra 2008
Solo Exhibition –The Catto Gallery, London 2008
Solo Exhibition – Alexander gallery, Bristol 2008
Appeared on the BBC painting Peter Alliss 2008
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2007
Catto Gallery solo show 2006
Alexander Gallery solo show 2006
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2006
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2005
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2003
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2002
The BP Awards 2000
