Albert Oehlen, the Futurists and the poet Ted Hughes were on my mind when I was making the Painting ‘Crazy Bitch’. That domestic machine the vacuum cleaner was my muse.
It sits in the corner, brooding, making me feel guilty that it should really be put to more use. When I do use it, I frequently battle with the thing, bits fall off constantly, I get tangled up in the hose and it no doubt needs to be emptied so lies in wait with full dust explosion potential. It doesn’t help that this make has a face on it which smiles at me. ‘Naff off’ says I, feeling pretty stupid that I am having discussions with a machine. But such is the solitary life of an artist. We get to have these conversations with all and sundry. Doesn’t have to be alive.
So clickity click with my camera, it becomes the subject for my latest work. The real transformation is within Photoshop where I play with repeating the form and emphasising the menacing nature of the hose – the idea of the trappings of everyday objects taking over. I have fun imitating pen lines with my mouse, creating virtual detritus upon the surface. I also fragment and distort both form and direction, some bits become like collaged inserts or small windows into something else. The vacuum cleaner becomes both threatening and dynamic – imbued with the power and savage cruelty of the animals in Ted Hughes poems.
I transfer the resultant digital image onto canvas and further transform it with paint, playing with arcs of the hose, the different shades of greys, the smouldering heat of the brown/black cleaner body, the glowing pinks and purples, trying to find that tentative balance between paint and digital image. I try to experiment with these ideas in a suggestive way so that the final painting crosses somewhere between the real and the imaginary. I am influenced by Albert Oehlen’s work – where it somehow plays with ‘that space between’ as well as grittily referencing technology, representation and abstraction.
As it shakes and shudders like some sort of Futurist painting, I cannot help but think – ‘this is where I am!’ Just a few weeks to go until my degree show, and I am all over the place in my head and in my actions. What to do….?
