DUDLEY AND DOUG BINDER PLUS PAUL McCARTNEYS'S PIANO
In September of 1965 Dudley took a studio/flat with Douglas Binder and David Vaughan. Dudley writes…
“Doug and I decided to paint the furniture, but what kind of designs should we employ? We wanted something that exuded joy and when I considered the sort of imagery which epitomised that for me, I was taken back to my early days of Rock and Roll with Teddy Boys bopping/jiving to Little Richard around the waltzer. I figured an intrinsic part of that package was fairground motifs; this was a form of folk art worth proliferating, but in a new way.
At that time we chose a look that was smooth and polished, almost mechanical, with hard-edge lines and smooth gradation. This impression required the painterly skills that Doug and I learnt at Art School, where in those days part of the curriculum involved the acquisition of heraldry and coach painting techniques. Dave, although a considerable draughtsman with a pencil, did not have this dexterity with the paintbrush or the predisposition for ‘applied art’, therefore his contribution to the group was solely that of a ‘front man’.”
Jasia Reichardt wrote in Studio International …
“The work of The Omega Workshops (1913-20) and that of BEV are the results of the same underlying intention. Although the objects were initially for their own use, they found their way into distinguished private collections. This manifestation follows directly, though unintentionally, the artist-craftsman tradition of the Omega Workshop, perhaps the major difference being that Omega was ridiculed and BEV accepted. The forms they employ derive from contemporary painting. Here the differences between fine art and applied art are often marginal and are more concerned with semantics than the object of painting that has been created.”