That's Christmas done. My blog began as a means of exploring the approach to my exhibition in February. Recently I have been clearing a space in my garden to place a shed in which I shall house my work when it returns from the exhibition. Occasionally, thoughts of ‘Shed, Boat, Shed' drift to mind. In terms of physical work and its satisfactions and tribulations, it is at times difficult to distinguish between making ‘art' and making anything else. The shed, its construction, its function(s), its foundations, its physical context, all have literal and metaphoric possibilities. (THE SHED is becoming a cliché.) But how do my shed and my art differ? I don't have to worry about the shed in the same way that my artwork concerns me. I feel vulnerable in relation to my artwork and what I say about it. In one sense it must stand without words. I am reading ‘Real Presences' by George Steiner with a dictionary at my side. And at the same time I have in mind something else that was once said to me, that ‘when you're doing the philosophy, never forget the Art. When you're doing the Art, forget the Philosophy.' I was also reading Tom Duggan's blog in which he mentions the work of Mark McGowan. These various ideas and experiences drift around attached to feelings and bumping into each other. Steiner makes the point that the most appropriate comment on art is other art. Which is getting me closer to what I am thinking about. Simon Starling says that his Shed Boat Shed is ‘the physical manifestation of a thought process'. Tom Duggan wonders whether Mark McGowan's work is ‘art' I wonder whether ‘traditional' artwork such as mine has a place any more. In a sense, painting today is arguably irrelevant repetition of its history through the elevation of style and content over form; it has become a parochial pursuit out of touch with real contemporary issues. But Simon Starling raises the issue of meaning. Is there a sense in which much art is misplaced literature? And what of the curatorial? My uneducated feeling is sometimes that in our commodified world, the artist and his/her work has become the curator's (the gallery owner's) raw material; the artist has been appropriated by the curator. If I were to have stumbled from a culture devoid of the aesthetic as we know (???) it and bumped into a painting leaning against the wall of a shed, how would I begin to know the difference between them? I think??
Reading through my post for 20th Nov I discovered that I had mistakenly written 'proceed' for 'precede'. An embarassing error, but errors open up possibilities . It was once pointed out to me that we do not know what we think until we have spoken. There is a sense in which we step into the dark ( or the light, even)and then reflect upon it. Painting is like that.
Often things are begun with excitement and enthusiasm, only to be obscured by whatever else catches the eye. This photograph was taken some years ago. It sums up my fears: it is almost sentimental. The image in black and white refutes the poppy's redness.It was taken after a period of rain. It appeals possibly to my worst tastes. I come to my images by tripping over them almost. I feel a need in my thinking, to justify a lack of 'project'. Contradictory feelings and understandings cloak my readings of others' blogs. If the mark is the thought then the intellectual underpinning of the work must be read from the mark and cannot precede it. Here is a Poppy.
Working today on this painting I am aware of the difficulty of seeing. Or to put it another way, the difficulty of accurate rendering. But that is not quite right either, because the act of looking reveals the impossibility of the task. I am constantly aware that what I produce is a compromise between my aspirations and my technical capacities. Images can only approach their objects and never quite meet them.
This work arose from a feeling that I wanted to make a large(ish)38in x60in painting. I like the physicality of painting with a large brush and immediate marks. Mixing paint, in this case grey/black/pink from blues browns and reds and creating an all-over surface of brushmarks was a pleasure in itself. Somewhat self indulgent perhaps. I do not have the confidence and cannot justify leaving what seems merely to be the visual equivalent of a soft drink. I looked at the surface and wanted to intimidate it. The yellow was to be an irreversible gesture. The bowl below arose from previous painting. There is something about the insubstantial nature of transparent glazes that is suggestive of form whilst contradicting it. So I did not want to make a detailed image, but an immanent one. Similarly with the flowers. They are painted with thin layers and bounded by dark line. I struggle with the line. I like tight line. It is the antithesis of gesture but provides me with a similarly physical enjoyment in the making and looking. The difference between elegance and clumsiness can be measured in hairsbreadths, as can that between meaning and nonsense.
So what have I done? I have never come to terms with the strangeness of it all.
My posted images do not appear too be of veyry high quality!!! work in progress I am learning!!
I have no idea where this blog will go. I was inspired in part by the shared uncertainties found in the blogs that I read!! I hope to use it as a means of working through thoughts and possibilities in relation to my work and methods. I am curious with regard to the kinds of discussion that exist here and elsewhere. I feel a dichotomy existing between my need to justify what I do in terms of 'ideas' and my concern that the mark is the thought. I do it and hope; I feel insecure about the process; a sense of direction is acompanied by a feeling of not knowing.
