This latest painting continues the abstract direction, but with a figurative reference. to a chaffinch that I found by the side of the road. I have used some of its soft pink-greys in the marks. The Triptych of earlier has been gradually submerging in this painting. Some of the old image is discernable through the later glazes. Some paintings just don’t ever work, and have to be defeated.
I went to see the Turner Prize exhibition. I am at a loss.
I frequently look at work and am engulfed by discomfort. I feel disappointment that works seem scaled to dimensions disproportionate to their content – like prototypes unnecessarily large – ideas in search of appropriate form. Looking at art in all its ‘subjectivity’ makes possible the ‘blaming’ of the artist for making meaningless objects.
The so-called subjectivity of art seems often a means of avoiding issues. In a subjective world, is consensus possible? The Turner Prize confers status. I might find it easier if the stakes were not so high.Would Lucy Skaer’s ‘Thames and Hudson’ be more intriguing if it were not ‘Art’? Inappropriate expectations can blind. There is such consensus, at least in contemporary art circles, that my judgments must somehow be based upon error. (I bought The Return of the Real, and the Oxford Dictionary of Critical Terms, recommended by Andrew Bryant – progress is slow.) Enrico David’s words in the artists’ video display appeared much more powerful than the work. Richard Wright’s wall painting seemed inappropriately traditional for the show, only its future destruction somehow lifting its modernism into a postmodern context? In a nearby gallery is a painting by Bridget Riley, the kind of thing with which I feel more at ease. But stepping back, what separates it in my mind from the Turner Prize work? Is it simply a matter of taste? If Riley’s work is no more or less ‘art’ than the sperm whale skull, then there is no connecting (for me) with Wright and friends until familiarity breeds content. But that is not sufficient.
Some, of my search is for recognition. I feel the implicit sadness in such a statement. I recognise the child desperate to be adult. These things impinge upon, perhaps dominate and disfigure, one’s capacity for openness to experience and ability to judge. Sometimes I experience a simple delight in making my work. Such times can occur daily, but are always under threat. The desire to leave all this behind can have the effect of intensifying the tension; picking at the sore becomes habitual when the spotlight remains on it. Perhaps without it, the next painting would not arrive; hope is always invested in what is around the corner. There is too a strangeness in being a middle-class person who spends his waking hours making paintings half-way down his garden!
I must appear to be a miserable old …! Agnes Martin and Cosmo would make good role models?
