There are things and experiences that I enjoy such as line and colour, paper and paint. I am just searching. I have been working on some more photographs of sunsets at St Ives. There are hundreds of thousands of sunset pictures out there. Photographers’ websites sell them by the ton. Many are the product of high levels of technical expertise. They have a kind of clean-cut impact. At the same time much is cliché par excellence. It lives on a different continent to most of the work found on this site; it is a hollow distillation of visual good taste. My toes curl at the thought of my taking pictures of sunsets; but I cannot resist. I do want them to be simple and to avoid cliché. And it’s like eating a whole chocolate bar in one go. When they come out of my printer my mouth waters sometimes. The paper surface and the colours!!! But they might just be crass. And there’s the problem; what’s true is true. Just indulging in a pleasurable activity might be the extent of my practice! I think that as well as waffle a lot, what I do is to make images that I enjoy. I enjoy the making and the looking at them. I enjoy the movement and energy involved.
I am increasingly aware of the contradictions in my blogging, since I have previously stated that I am never really happy with what I do. The truth really consists of lots of little bits of truths, half truths and part truths, often contradictory. Contradictions are like tectonic plates, simultaneously destructive and creative. My problems are probably to do with guilt!
I used to suggest to kids to ‘feel with their eyes’ in a tactile sense and follow the sensation of surface qualities onto the paper. In a sense that is all that I do.
