I made these small works last week. They are acrylic and pen on canvas scraps pasted onto a cardboard backing. Their subject is painting, concrete and the natural world. We continue to build up and concrete over the environement – effectively squeezing out the natural world and living in an increasingly more artificial one. Horizons and Frames, whilst incorporating the painterly devices of their titles, concern possible futures in the former case and boundaries and limitations in the latter.
Went to a talk by the artist-photographer Andreas Schmidt in the Waterfront yesterday afternoon. Really loved his Vegas photographs, and his way of placing them where they have a symbiosis with their surroundings. I also liked his idea of using photobooks to display his images in a way that gave them a meaning when grouped together in this way. I started thinking about how to display my own photos because I want to do it in a way in which they have meaning and it seems to me now that a photobook could be the way to display my photos together with selected images of my work so that my intentions in producing the work is clear.
I have decided to work on paper for a while. I think that canvas was too “precious”. Anyway, this has started to work. I have produced looser work that is, I think, a bit better. I just need to remember to use the same technique on canvas.
I used some of the details of my drawings of the power station to make some dark paintings. The first is about the looming, dark, impenetrability of the building. Also, something about degeneration – let’s face it, these buildings are going to be around for centuries. The second painting is more about logic – I was thinking about the science involved in the splitting of the uranium atom to produce nuclear fission. The third painting is part of the building with a sort of bridge. It is about the bridge between the natural and unnatural environment and is as yet unfinished.
I have tried to find books on contemporary landscape painting and came across a few but not many. This is strange. There are lots of good books on the work of individual landscape artists but not, it seems to me, much on contemporary landscape painting as a branch of Fine Art. Why is this? I read Malcolm Andrews book Landscape and Western Art and it gives a brilliant account of early uses of landscape on into the Romantic period, the Sublime and the Modern period. Then after a nod to Anselm Kiefer’s Markische Sand the book moves on to the solid ground (pun intended) of Land Art. Now, there is a bit of a void here. There are lots of contemporary landscape artists producing work in different styles and offering different motivations and explanations of their practise. They are visible individually but not en masse. Strange times.
Last week I walked along the Dunwich Heath coastline heading towards Sizewell power station. As I got nearer and nearer the power station I noticed how more and more spiritually drained I felt with the large hulk of the building taking up more and more of my visual space. It looks so out of place within the natural environment of Minsmere heath and the shoreline. There are structures like oil rigs in the sea out there too – something to do with the power station I believe. It is a place of massive contradictions. It was a relief leaving and walking back in the other direction – spiritually enlivening to notice the colours and textures of Minsmere and the coastline on the walk back. So that made me think about how much the environment can control state of mind and wellbeing. While I was at the power station I made several sketches of the building. I made these from an up close point of view and also took some photos in similar vein – these to be used to make paintings back in the studio. Also to be used, the dark memory of the place now in my head.
