Posting this last blog for the year. After the Christmas celebrations and hiatus, I return to my thoughts, and my work.
I look forward to the exhibition ‘Trouble & Strife‘ at the Beaney in Canterbury, a companion exhibition to the touring exhibition ‘Manet’s Execution of Emperor Maximilian’ making its first stop there.
Manet used newspaper reportage to make his painting, and was banned from exhibiting it because it was politically loaded. My work uses war photography and asks
‘Can a picture move us any more?’
I hope to encourage artists to take part in a discussion about warfare, image saturation and helplessness. Let us see what happens!
The world mourns Nelson Mandela. He was certainly an icon for the late 20th century, but they’re still arguing, fighting and oppressing their own people. Nothing ever changes, it seems, human nature being as it is. And it doesn’t matter at what sophisticated level of detail we share information, most people think themselves powerless to change things.
I’ve made a piece for an upcoming exhibition at the Beaney Museum in Canterbury, and I’ve made it to shock, to make people think. At the same time knowing that it will simply be consumed, like any other image.
And this basically is how we all operate – at one level (public engagement) we feel dismay, fear, shock, but because we’re cushioned in a relatively peaceful lifestyle, and believe it’s not our problem we can still operate at level two, looking after the personal.
I expect it was like this in Syria, and many other countries, before they plunged into war.
As far as the personal is concerned, I’ve more or less finished the mirror commission. And the series of little paintings I was making in between seems to be very useful, so I’ll carry on exploring. Painting is where I become completely absorbed in the process, unlike digital work, where my brain is always thinking about ‘ends’.
Painting – my ‘level 3’
