Ronnie Wood's instinct is to paint it colourfulIN RONNIE WOOD'S new art show Raw Instinct there’s a striking mixed media piece as soon as you step into the gallery.
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By: Clair Woodward
Published: Sun, April 21, 2013
It shows the Rolling Stones on stage and Wood has surrounded them with paper money. Wood has notes depicting a favourite subject, wildlife, around him, Charlie Watts has notes with references to his hobby of breeding horses, Keith Richards has currency featuring pirates...and Sir Mick Jagger? He’s just surrounded by money, lots of it.
This work is titled What Price Tickets? and if you wanted to buy it it would set you back £295,000. He clearly has a wicked sense of humour.
Wood, who could still be viewed as a junior member of the Stones joining the band not 50 years ago but in the mid-Seventies, has permission to make tongue-in-cheek comments about the band’s fame and fortune and why not? Aged 65, he still possesses the most rock ’n’ roll hairstyle ever, a shock of jet black barnet standing to attention and still has the body of a skinny kid.
He’s hugely enthusiastic about his new show (the paint is still wet on a few pieces), and is keen to celebrate the Stones, one of his major subjects.
Over a coffee and a cigarette (this seems dangerously louche) in the elegant West End Castle Gallery he explains how the band have become used to having a fine artist in their midst.
“They like being painted now. They’ve learned to live with it,” Ronnie says. “They used to see me with a sketchpad and go, ‘Oh, put it away!’ but now they like what I do.
“I feel that I know them better by painting them. I see them on stage as a moving painting and store the images away in my mental notebook.”
On stage with the Stones, drummer Charlie Watts looks impassive and inscrutable and Ronnie often paints him in the same way. Yet in his new show there’s a pen and ink study of Charlie on the drums, grinning broadly, having a fantastic time. “When he plays jazz, there’s much more of a smile on his face,” Ronnie says.
It’s obvious that he enjoys getting to know his subjects as much as he does putting their images on canvas.
“You can get to the heart of people pretty quickly. You’ve got to be an amateur psychologist as a musician as it can be a lonely time backstage on the road. It’s not all reaping the rewards of rock ’n’ roll success and there’s a lot of emotion that goes on in making it all last.”
Ronnies’s artistic career has lasted 50 years, as long as the Stones’s musical one. His elder brothers Arthur and Ted were commercial artists and Ronnie was determined to follow them into their chosen careers. He was so precociously talented that his work appeared on Adrian Hill’s Sketch Club television programme, which ran from 1958 to 1960.
“I used to rush home from school to see the show and I got home one day and it was my painting on the telly,” he remembers. You can almost see the proud little boy in his craggy face as he recalls his first brush with fame. “The next day at school, everyone said, ‘I saw your painting on the telly!’ and I suddenly found out what it was like to be popular.” Ronnie went on to study art in Ealing and was also in local bands so what was the point at which he made the decision to follow the latter? “It came down to the simple matter of bringing money home to mum, really,” he says.
“It was either getting four quid a week signwriting or a fiver a night in my first band, even if you’d have to go down to Cornwall for a gig. There was no argument.
“Plus, there were unions in the art world and you needed a card and to know someone to get somewhere so I thought I had to go my own way and be my own legend!” he says with a throaty laugh.
Though the Stones are a major (and majorly lucrative) subject of Ronnie’s art he paints a staggeringly large array of works.
The exhibition features a portrait of Salvador Dali painted on a mirror, some very tasteful nudes, a touching pencil sketch of his daughter Leah reading, a huge painting of a rhino (Ronnie says he looks like “a real angry boy”) based on a sculpture he saw outside the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and several studies of racehorses and racing people. “I love painting musicians. There’s a shorthand between us and we get each other but what I love doing is going to the races and sketching the real old gambling boys in the paddock.”
Ronnie also takes private commissions for portraits. “Freddie Mercury’s girlfriend Mary would like me to paint a picture of Freddie for her and through Sharon Osbourne I got to paint Ozzy [before their recent separation]. She says they’ve got it on the staircase at home and it looks brilliant.”
With that Ronnie launches himself into the opening night party of his show, the guest list of which he’s organised himself. There is Sarah Ferguson, ex-Stone Mick Taylor and socialite Heather Kerzner but what strikes you is it’s really all about family. Daughter-in-law-to-be Fearne Cotton was there having left Ronnie’s son, Jesse, at home with their new baby Rex. Sons Tyrone and Jamie attended along with their sister Leah who brought her three-year-old daughter Maggie.
There was also Ronnie’s new wife of three months, Sally. They are clearly mad about each other and one of Ronnie’s gorgeous nudes bears more than a passing resemblance.
Ronnie Wood’s Raw Instinct show is at Castle Fine Art, 24 Bruton Street, London, W1J 6QQ until July 31. Limited editions of The Ronnie Wood Collection are available from Castle Galleries (castlegalleries.com/ 0121 655 0003).[
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-04-21 17:04 by bye bye johnny.