Signed, titled and dated on reverse
In continuing to push his own language, one of Greaves's most powerful recent achievements is his use of a bar that runs horizontally across several large-scale paintings.
This shelf-like structure runs through Sunset (1997) allowing Greaves to situate still-life objects without having to present a table-top or locate subjects without the need for an horizon line. The result objectifies each element, even giving substance to the insubstantial, whether it is a flower, a sculpture, a tree or even the sun:
I like formal structures that can do more than one job in a painting. I like the viewer to be led beyond the painting only to come back to it. So the single bar passing through the picture is like a continuous shelf in the mind. I also like the way the bar acts chromatically. It allows one to pitch the line to a different key from the objects on the line.the climactic Sunset the red ribbons of the sun are set against the deepest blue and are accentuated by the horizontal bar of purple-grey with yellow edges. Within the sun, an arrow points downwards affirming that this is a sunset, not a sunrise.
History
Mappin Art Gallery, Six Sheffield Artists, Sheffield, 1966
Derrick Greaves, Paintings and Drawings 1952 - 2002, James Hyman Gallery, 28 January - 4 March 2005
Literature
Mappin Art Gallery, Six Sheffield Artists, Sheffield, 1966
Derrick Greaves: Paintings and Drawings 1952 - 2002, James Hyman Gallery, London, 2003, (cat. 47), illustrated p.40.
James Hyman, Derrick Greaves: From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La, Lund Humphries, London 2007, illustrated p.151.