As I write, the uncertainty surrounding Brexit continues. Like many people, I am finding it hard to digest, to understand what means what and what I should believe. There is no stake in the ground as the political surface we stand on feels shaky and kind of like quicksand. I get the feeling that this constantly shifting paradigm is going to be the way forward.
My current painting efforts attempt to capture this. I’m not trying to be deliberately political. It is more of a reflection of a state of mind. Entities move back and forth. Brush marks suggest variations but no sooner appear than fade away. Twisting, swirling, falling, fading. The more you peer, the more you see and it’s impossible to unpick the ends. These uncertainties are set against much more definite shapes and marks that make their statement and display an energy.
Last time I wrote I was going back and forth deciding how I should approach the 2 large blank canvases that were resting against the wall in my studio.
I finally decided I was going to approach one by using collage and the other as a pure painting. It is now nearly the end of December and not a lot has happened – certainly in respect to the collage anyway. Christmas, family commitments and 2 exhibitions I have been involved in rather took over.
However, before this hiatus began I did do some painting. I used a digital montage I created as my starting point and then very quickly and loosely tried to respond to this using just paint. My idea at the time was just to get some marks down onto the canvas and then use those marks and the spaces in-between to trigger further development and experimentation. This has not happened though. The initial marks I have made definitely have a life of their own and created a barrier preventing me from moving forward. I am hoping when I return to the studio my artist block will have diminished. However I do like this initial painting. It has an energy about it and portrays a kind of language I wasn’t expecting.
Shown here are 3 compositions. The first is an earlier painting on which I have managed to play with the space unheeded by my own painting restrictions. The other 2 are the original digital composition I created and the resultant painting which somehow is doing things for itself.
I am carrying on making art using primarily 2 different processes. The first is using my usual photo montage technique, but then ripping the image up, collaging it on to a surface and then painting within it. The second way is pure painting, using thin layers of acrylic paint, followed by oil paint, then playing within the dynamics and images I see and imagine within these layers.
I have 2 large blank canvases sitting against a wall, waiting to be worked upon. I am undecided as to what technique I should apply to each of these and am wondering whether I should simply just do one of each. My experiments have been confined to quite small pieces and I am relatively happy with both lots of results. No doubt switching to a much larger scale will bring its own set of issues. Also I have to bear in mind, that normally it is entirely appropriate that my work is small scale. The subject matter is the ordinary, the mundane, and the overlooked. But do I take my subject matter to a larger scale? ‘I am not sure this will even work?
Scale can say a lot about a piece. I am fairly sure that the insignificance of my original image will be lost, but so what! It may make for an interesting dynamic. Process will dominate and lead the way I suspect so the piece will become a transformative exercise. Let it go, I say!
Layers of meaning
The art I normally make consists of layers of photography, drawing and paint. Sometimes the photographs are digitally altered using Photoshop, sometimes they are not. Sometimes these photographs are printed or transferred to a surface whole and then paint, pen or pencil applied to these surfaces afterwards. Other times, the photographs may be torn up and applied to the surface like a collage, with deliberate gaps and abrasions upon the surface. Then when I paint or draw upon the work, these gaps and abrasions become an important component. Either way, my art consists of layers whether it be digital, photographic, collage, painting or drawing.
These layers play an important role in that they act as a kind of veiled curtain where there is no clarity. This allows for my imagination to step in and fill in the gaps. The uncertainty and incompleteness provides a springboard for all sorts of possibilities to develop. It is very much like staring into the clouds and seeing an ever-changing mural in the sky full of faces, animals, objects and places.
I have been well aware for many years, that this openness and temporality is critical to help me develop my ideas. However I have been keen to try this approach with using just paint and the immediacy of the environment around me to see what sort of effect this might have on my practice.
I am carrying on focusing on buildings and interiors, observing the the piecemeal view we have in our daily existence, those bits we can see out of the corner of our eye, the suggestions of objects that remain unformed, the spaces within spaces, the ceiling, floors, surfaces, furniture, shapes, colours and textures. The recording of these things with paint is deliberately not accurate. I’m not trying to duplicate the environment but rather use the suggestion of what is around me in combination with paint to evoke alternative places and something other.
The paintings displayed are examples of my latest endeavours.
Traces and residue, layers of surface and non-surface, light and shadow, matt and shine.
Suggestions of rooms within rooms, windows and doors delineated by a single line.
Gestural, flippant even, in its approximation.
An interior, a construct? Are we out or are we in?
There is a lurking familiarity that cannot be finalised.
A feeling of something unfinished – to do so would be lies.
