James Scrase

James Scrase is a very unusual artist by today's standards. Trained as a classical painter in Florence under Pietro Annigoni, it is almost as if the art of the 20th Century has passed by unrecognised. His work is rigorously disciplined and formal, based on a virtual Italian Renaissance apprenticeship. Accuracy of observation and craftsmanship with materials are the essence of his work and are qualities which made him ideal as our latest Artist in Residence.

James exhibits worldwide, so we were particularly pleased to be able to set up a small exhibition of his work in the Art Studio. He was able to use this as a starting point for discussion and practical work, citing the techniques of masters like Titian and Rembrandt, and showing the children a human skull to explain the underlying structure of the head in connection with several portraits.

His work is very wide ranging, dealing with the themes of landscape, seascape, still-life, portrait and figure. He is also an exceptional muralist and fresco painter, but for practical reasons we had to narrow the field down to one aspect of his work. Portraiture seemed a good choice of subject because of the wealth of things to learn and proved to be a challenging and rewarding experience for all the children that took part in his classes. He provided the children with the means to tackle quite complex visual problems by practical demonstrations of drawing where guidelines were laid out and the proportions of heads and their features were discussed in detail.

The children drew from plaster copies of classical sculptures lit strong to reveal highlight and shadow. The theme was extended over a period of time and outcomes included self-portraits and relief tiles of profile heads in clay.