Returning to familiar symbols and a new fascination with painting ‘floating objects’ I produced some of my last paintings on panel before utilising plywood board to be able to manufacture more paintings with less time spent constructing their frames.
The pieces crafted at this time were TREATY (see image), CIVIL WAR (see image), THE SUPERMAN (see image), and EL SALVADOR I (see image) which were also among the last to use my ‘crown’ motif until the ‘Banana Republic series’ to be mentioned in a later post. With TREATY, I was compelled to explore the possibility that paintings needed to be viewed from more than one perspective and this lead me to try to produce the image of a devil (not sure why exactly) out of two artillery shells, two crowns, two bushy moustaches, and one thin moustache. Funnily enough most viewers seem to believe that the thin moustache is little more than an outline of a pair of breasts which, being painted in homage to a particularly famous Spanish Surrealist whose works commanded several interpretations, perhaps this makes TREATY one of the more successful and under-rated pieces I have produced.
CIVIL WAR takes it’s title from the Spanish conflict whilst using visual inspiration from Girgio Morandi (1890 – 1964) to make a floating sheet of metal, artillery shell and moustache into a still-life with an anti-war aura.
THE SUPERMAN on the other hand is probably one of the very few paintings to feature a bushy German moustache as well as scattered pastel dots, and red sheets of metal. Clownish, and brazen it is not quite a failure that in retrospect was crafted much too fast.
However, EL SALVADOR I was a breakthrough. Tributed to that aforementioned Spanish surrealist who died the year I was born, SALVADOR combines the artillery shells and moustaches of previous paintings with comical lobster claws to present an abstract image of the famous painter it is inspired by. Inventive, colourblasted and friendly, SALVADOR was exhibited in the ‘Hot-One-Hundred’ exhibition at Schwartz Gallery in summer 2013 to positive feedback.
It’s partner EL SALVADOR II (see image) chose a more child-friendly interpretation of the Spanish painter instead crafting a face portrait out of the floating objects depicted against a rarely used blue background. It was also the first of a new working method of painting directly onto plywood board rather than panel frames. This piece was also met with friendly association and exhibited in the ‘Sweet ‘Art’s Summer Show 2013’ at Espacio Gallery with the Sweet Arts Collective.
From this point onwards the moustache motif gradually began to leave my canvases to the point of disappearing all together
