Painting the surfaces is ongoing. The visual object grows from tactile pleasure. The lines in the paintings seem to create a sinaesthetic tension.
Martin Creed’s Turner installation of the light going on and off drew attention to that point where there is neither one thing nor its opposite, where nothing exists but potential. Line has something of that quality. In the case of a dividing line, the line belongs to both sides and to neither. It both separates and binds. Equal division of surface leads both to balance and to a sense of something unresolved. In the triptych, the lines imply space in the grey texture; what is implied is felt and not directly seen.
Franny Swann’s concern for a coherent body of work (see Forums) has been floating around in my mind whilst painting. The surfaces might be the flower paintings without the flowers? Implicit in Franny’s question is the notion of choice, that we have a choice about what we do and are. Looking at people in general might suggest otherwise. We make ‘choices’ and ‘decisions’ but only in a general dispositional framework. Inconsistency can be as much a dispositional trait as its opposite. Coherence? I find that I am drawn to (disposed to make) a certain kind of line, and mark and to become lost in a certain kind of surface. (It might be called ‘style’?) Like the dividing line, the paintings are located between familiar comfort and my distrust of the comfortable. In the end coherence must be compatible with the unexpected.
I became aware of a painting, ‘God Nose’ by John Baldessari. It is in his exhibition at Tate Modern. I could not understand it. I looked at a reproduction trying to connect the nose with God. It is in the sky; there is a cloud close by. There was clearly a depth of meaning that I could not fathom. I went to the exhibition. As I stood in front of the painting, the penny dropped. I am disposed to experience this kind of puzzlement. It can be quite enjoyable. The last to arrive must be as welcome as the first.
