Bernhard Gaul ‘Three Studies on Poussin (Book 1515)’

In June 2014 the painter Bernhard Gaul sent a letter to The LFTT requesting to work with book 1515 (Poussin by Walter Friedlaender) from his studio in Corgreaghy, Co. Monaghan. Often using an existing painting as a foil to work against, Gaul describes painting as a ‘social praxis’ and ‘poetic experience; a process of finding positions in response to external parameters’. Gaul originally studied theatre, film and media and first came to painting in 1991 with a study of the centre piece of Uccello’s ‘Battle of San Romano’, in which segments of a reproduction were copied onto 99 wooden blocks and later assembled as a fragmented painting. In contrast with the immediacy of theatre Gaul describes a dissatisfaction with the traditional forms of communicating through painting, ‘displaying artefacts only in set-ups that have more connotation of retail than direct exchange’ and says he is ‘still looking for a form of engagement that could combine that direct interaction of the theatre with the form of reflection and expression that I pursue with painting’. It was the process of documenting the method of exchange and reflection that sparked his interest in The LFTT Library. Gaul set up the self-publishing online platform bgx:mag.com in 2007 as  a way of providing a public space which could be used to expose works in progress as well as publishing articles of his own and by others which otherwise might not be easily available. www.bgxmag.com