Urban Desires
Quite often I work on a number of pieces at the same time. Currently I have a very big painting on the way, but because of various reasons, I can’t currently proceed with it. Normally it’s to do with needing further supplies, or school holidays limiting the time and effort I can devote to it. When it’s like this, I tend to start on much smaller and less pressurised pieces whilst I wait. The ‘Urban Desire’ series is exactly this. Using found bits of wood (courtesy of local skips) and old packaging from supermarkets, I have transferred on to them photographs of urban moments and scenes. The images are meaningful to me in that they are of very normal city type things but where I perceive a sense of grace arising out of the ordinary. They tend to remind me of Oriental flower arranging or a kind of feng shui in which the subjects have a formal quality and composition.
They include a photograph of outside plant shadows against a window. Ironically I saw this in an art gallery and was taken with this scene rather than any of the art at the time. Another is of a café window where a design on its surface is mirrored by a reflection of a tree. Two other pieces are of bits of foliage and plants which had been thrown away in a skip and bin but looking as posed and arranged as can be. Another piece is a very simple and natural display of dead rose heads on a footpath and another of an elaborate flower arrangement within a café/bar scene.
Within all these works I have painted within these images continuing on with my exploration of ebb and flow of the digital and paint. The discarded bases on which these images quietly sit reflect the disposable or temporary nature of the images themselves.
