In 2012, an organised trip to London and the Tate Modern, introduced me to Contemporary/Conceptual Art and although I went along with an open mind, I found that blank monitor screens, and collections of detritus with pretentious, elitist labelling offered very little evidence of craftsmanship, and I was left cold and uninspired by the experience.
However, a field trip to Orford Ness in Suffolk, provided a rich source of material for my work. I was struck by the contradiction of beauty and ugliness within the wild natural landscape, when seen in contrast to the legacy of redundant, degraded, man made fabrications.
My work is driven by the concept of man’s destruction of a beautiful, wild landscape. My attempt to portray that contrast is represented by conceptual images including:
Contrast1 an inverted black and white oil painting on a small canvas board. Contrast2 a black/white and red illustration of beauty and ugliness with hazard warning signs and a warning sky. Legacy a cardboard construction with edited contrasting photographs and detritus from the site.
These were my earliest attempts to portray a conceptual narrative in my work and was influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, as seen below.
Below is a selection of my photographs and images from the Orford visit.
NOTE: CAPTIONS SHOW WHEN IMAGES CLICKED/OPENED INDIVIDUALLY.
Scratching the Surface.
My degree studies included experimentation with drawing, painting, sculpture, printing and photography and I began to produce work from life studies and abstraction.
The use of digital media and image manipulation, became instrumental in the transformation of my photographs as a base to create abstract drawings and paintings.
The use of colour is essential to my work and I found that the use of digital editing provided me with a freedom to experiment. I took particular interest in Pop Art and the work of Andy Warhol, who’s style would begin to influence my work.
A selection of my early work at UCS shown below:
The Beginning.
Prior to my degree studies, I attended evening classes at Ipswich Art School in the 1990′s, where my practice focused on painting wildlife in Gouache.
I referred to work by Terence Bond and worked from photographs in a part photo-realist style, adding movement and narrative to create originality. I enjoy relating stories and even at these artistically naïve times it was important for me to add concept to the basic photographs.
For example, the Kestrels are much more than a pretty picture of birds in flight. Constructed from separate photographs from different books, to create the courting scene, the grey stormy sky and a fallen tree within a heathland setting, refers to the threatened destruction of the birds natural habitat, from house building.
My desire was to break away from the confines of photo-realism and become more expressive in my drawing and painting.
NOTE: CAPTIONS SHOW WHEN IMAGES CLICKED/OPENED INDIVIDUALLY.
