A Plan of just down the road from George Square (the leaf it tagged as me)
Mary Cooles’s perfection – alter-image – I entered in to her domain and the painting remained as my disguise.
“I am talking to you today about alter image.” This alternative image is changed during intervals in the installation process. You see before I made considerably large movements, God knows I had room for it then, now I make smaller perfections.
There is something about the house plants that litter my window seat in the living room. They have entered in to my drawing process as my drawings take place in that room, they have entered and are a part of – or perhaps already were a part of – my experience.
The other day, in envious delight, I visited the studios of two other artists who think a lot. In envious delight their studios exist on a mezzanine surrounding the gallery of the studio complex below. One of the artists has a cactus on his shelf, the other a picture of a cheese plant on her desk next to an open book or two. I now have a picture of another cheese plant’s leaf next to an empty espresso cup on my wall above my writing desk, tagged with bent over masking tape. In the picture, according to the photographer, the leaf is also tagged as me.
There must be a connection here. There are fucking house plants everywhere and this studio complex I entered in to uses house plants to make you feel at home, or to make the studio holders feel at home.
In this studio-cum-gallery in Glasgow, I will use a houseplant or two to make a projection in shadow on the wall, I will move one leaf one by one, tacked with masking tape to the floor.
Back to the window seat, where each pain, as you lie underneath the sill on the white sofa, frames another gull in the sky and another flag whistling in the wind: there on this sill I cannot sit, there are too many plants, and instead I place an oil painting on the window seat to dry in the sun. This painting is build on systematic geometry that is deliberately altered, a very conscious choice to go wrong. In the middle of this painting there is a whole, or a window, through which you can focus in again on the framed image: a gull seems closer for some reason, and the flags more resonant whipped in the sea air. I will bring this painting with me please and I will use this painting please as it is a painting and it belongs in a gallery not on a window sill.
