Alan Kestner’s and Rosie Phipps’s paintings are on view at the downstairs patient waiting area in the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Windmill Rd, Oxford OX3 7LD until 8th March. Walk through the main entrance and straight on to the outpatient’s corridor and waiting area at the back. The best times to visit is in the evenings or on Saturday afternoon or all day Sunday when there are few or no patients.
My pictures at the Nuffield Orthopedic Centre are developments from drawings I made in 2021. I scanned the drawings and worked on them using a drawing tablet.
Why do humans act so differently from one another? Some people scam, steal or hurt others whereas others help in disaster areas, give to charity or help their neighbours. No matter what paleontological period, nature always follows a series of patterns. And one of the most important of these is variety.
Unlike a natural ecosystem with the many thousands of different beetles or butterflies, our variation lies deep inside our large brains. My drawings reflect these differences from musicians to fairytale characters to artists to others reverting to the past when we lived in the trees. Could it be that nature has created in our society a complete ecosystem within one single species?
The works here reflect this concept and are a composite of drawings and digital developments. They are printed out on art paper and then stretched over wood and card. If you would like prints or more information, please contact me at ludwigkestner(at)outlook.com.
Jessica’s memories stream out of her head in all directions. She remembers with sadness the happy days she spent with her partner (right). She still has many friends (left and below) but the relationships are fleeting and now require more effort to maintain.
Time, here, is time-lapse with multiple copies of each character and movement. An opera singer (Jessye Norman) warms up with a few visible practice notes. Dysfunctional friends (bottom right) argue or display their obsessions to each other. A peaceful man releases a dove symbolizing his desire for peace and harmony amongst all this bustle and strife.
For over one hundred years Marcel Duchamp has dominated avant-garde art and here all his modern-day followers go to worship at a giant urinal in his memory (missing here but can be seen top right in Drawings). As in the Tower of Babel, every artist speaks in the voice of his favourite art movement such as Abstract Expressionism, Conceptualism and so on. To add spice, silly politicians (Nick Clegg and David Cameron; Teresa May and Donald Tusk; Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings; Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton; Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan) move by the open archways, dressed and acting like the school children they really are.
Nature sometimes works backwards and organisms shrink or revert back to earlier forms. Here a group of humans has decided to live in the trees again like our ape ancestors. They may be hoping for a utopian life but human nature always intervenes and sets up conflicts and rivalries.
At the height of Covid the Queen spoke to the nation encouraging us to care for each other and ourselves. I wondered whether she ever got tired of duty and wanted to revert to pastimes of her own? Here she plays a magic harp given to her by an old man on her coronation. Notes stream out in all directions and light up the trees with musical patterns and the leaves with images of her favourite musicians (Yehudi Menuhin; David Oistrakh; Pablo Casals; Segovia; John Williams; Itzhak Perlman; amongst others.
This picture was inspired by my thoughts on the human ecosystem. Ecosystems have trophic levels with apex predators at the top feeding off those below. Here, a modern apex exploiter, Harvey Weinstein, tries to seduce a woman (bottom left), but she is armed with a second personality in her breast and manages to resist him. Further conflict and confusion goes on above with a fighting couple (centre) and medical experts arguing about whether pills or natural herbs are best (right). A budding author (top) can’t decide if she should send her manuscript to Virago Press or whether she should now have equal opportunity wherever else she wants.
Sometimes, we can remember a few images from our dreams but can’t put them together to make sense. This man’s dreams stream out into the floral wallpaper behind him and turn it into weird scenes of watering cans and odd looking animals. He hasn’t noticed it yet but on the table his bowl of fish soup has become more lively than he anticipated.
The shapes here, in the second of the memories triptych, were inspired by music. The curving forms with their simple star shapes mirror the melody and rhythm of operatic music. The singer Beniamino Gigli (top right) sends his beautiful notes out into the auditorium and down to the violinist and double bass player below. But look carefully – what are the two strange fish doing in the centre of the picture?
The original drawing for this painting was inspired by Dickens’ Little Dorrit. However, his female characters are often too good to be true and so I have interpreted her as plump and pleasure-seeking. Instead of marrying Clennam, as in the story, she is jumping into the arms of Pancks who is the rent-collecting clerk of Casby.
Rosie’s pictures have been removed for copyright reasons.