Mock Artist Talk +3
Q. You mentioned in a previous post [Post #11] about possible paintings detouring from your trademarked grid/abstract work to dark night landscapes of street scenes. Do you think these will be carried out soon?
A. Absolutely, I can see the work developing to incorporate tad more realistic landscapes, still lacking figures so as to explore the chosen themes in new imagery, probably trying not to paint text to accompany it: let the viewer take-in the night scene.
Q. But wouldn’t this proposed new work actually make it more difficult to distinguish your work from others, and harder to understand the topics you are exploring in the work? How would it translate across?
A. Admittedly the proposed new work’s imagery would be dramatically different; someone working in both abstract and non-abstract painting; which is why to avoid just jumping into this new stuff it would be best to continue the work created since University [grid, abstract painting] for a good period of time before deciding to exhibit opposing visual work.
It would not translate the exact same way, that is certain, but it could still explore ideas about nationalism by using images of derelict buildings and scene at night to cast a similar pessimistic view of previously held optimistic utopias.
Q. Referring back to a previous Talk regarding use of colour and gloss paint in general, what does it look like the new work will reflect of the Residency Gallery’s town of Stoke-on-Trent if anything?
A. Previously it felt necessary to only use gloss with hardly any reflective finish, but recent events and developments have drawn up an interest in using reflective finish gloss so that it does exactly what it says on the tin: reflect, and reflect the world the viewer in a makeshift mirror.
For this job, black is the most effective colour to do so, being a colour that scientifically absorbs other colours rather than bouncing them back – being open, rather than closed – and also existential.
However, using white would be out of the question unless it was being mixed with black paint to create grey and thus a colour that is not necessarily ‘liberal’ but accepting.
Other colours like magnolia, stone, etc should really only be used with hints of dark tones to continue an exploration of dystopia and negativity (representing the ‘worst’) in order to be prepared for whatever the future may bring.
Something that the work is not is hyper or psychedelic; it is a tad conservative but only on the side of enforcing and abiding by rules and laws set-down such as using a structural grid, using limited colours and others such.
This potentially makes the work to be about condition and possibly exploring feelings of betrayal.
After-all, the days you remember the most are the worst ones because they made you who you are, what you learned from, and too much freedom to do anything you please is the real hell. If everything is allowed and everything is accepted then that presents the real crisis of “where-do-we-go-from-here” syndrome.
And not being accepted into every opportunity, or exhibition is not the end of the world… it is only the reflection of the time we are living in. The old philosophy is true the world is not going to change to you, you have to change toward it. But that should not stop you from completely losing your personality, mannerisms or belief systems.
Q. Where do you see the new work being made for the debut solo exhibit developing?
A. Lessons learned from University lecturers and tutors peaked interest in seeing the painted text to be made-up of sentences rather than just quick-fire words and being larger size than 38 x 31 centimetres, so still leaving plenty of room for exploration and investigation into the selected topics and discussions, and in the greater context of contemporary painting.
