Page 16 - Studio International - July 1966

Roger Barnard Slowly 1966
Roger Brace It won't bounce 1965-66
Acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 in. Oil on canvas 72 x 72 in.

Justin Knowles 180 1966 1966
Acrylic on fibre glass Sphere diameter 66 in.
One thing which is not appreciated by the public at all is
the immensely high artistic casualty rate of young artists
when they leave art school. Why should the public care
about that? The cause always is the gap between wanting
to paint, enjoying it, doing it with style or talent or charm
or what, on the one hand, and on the other knowing what
to paint. Some artists know, some find out, a few make
not knowing what to paint into their theme, most never
discover it and never will.

May 23
TOTTENHAM MEWS Justin Knowles is a rare present-day
phenomenon among young painters (of something quite
common among the older generation). He is an artist
with no formal training. In view of the post art-school
casualty rate I referred to he can possibly feel thankful
for having missed it. The Peter Stuyvesant Foundation
formerly employed Knowles as a director and it is hard
to resist the fantastic notion that their brainchild has
taken physical shape in the form of his debut as an
artist.
His paintings are large shaped canvasses, crescent en-
closing crescent enclosing circle, the canvas shapes then
diversified by painted circles, crescents and arcs in hard
bright colours. Occasionally the third dimension is
brought in and they stand on the floor like canvas
sculptures, or, as in his fibreglass sphere IBO, are suspend-
ed from on high.
I do not question the aesthetic motives behind these
large daringly-simple works, motives which he would
seem to share with other British hard-edge painters,
Hoyland, Plumb, etc. It is an artistic form of large scale