A new year should signify new beginnings, keeping resolutions, such as maintaining this online artist journal. It has instead instigated the rough discipline of a period of frugality. I've spent the last few days drawing my thoughts on how to utilise all the oddments of calico, string, wire, wood and board stored in the shed, in response to the many who say I should explore more sculptural or ceramic methods...
I've kept most offcuts of board and they have begun to bow with damp. I was quite taken by their gentle curves laid out in a row, all identical in size. Their contours instigated these drawings.
More contours and curves!
I'm still obsessed with squares, since they present obvious relationships in overall structure, though the previous drawings were an attempt to move towards a new format.
A combination of squares and curves -here I was thinking of ways to extend outwards or around without it becoming three- dimensional, to retain the framing format of the rectangle.I'm currently quite frustrated by the restrictions laid upon me , but I am hoping that some good will come of being ever resourceful. When the chickens came into lay (in the midst of the frost and snow) it seemed that I too was entering a period of embryonic renewal. Holding a freshly laid, still warm egg in my palm, with snow all around, I marvelled at its elegant design and perfect symmetry- all the more beautiful for being such a simple and prosaic object. I've also begun an obsessive interest in composting, and I am not sure if this has had (or will have) any bearing on the development of my work. This year, I've committed myself to overseeing this organic process of turning vegetable garbage into fresh compost for my seedlings and plants, by purchasing a giant hexagonal bin made of recycled plastic - an unashamedly environmental measure. All of which leads me to think - I need to crack on with utilising the remnant materials and in the process of being practical and thrifty, nurture something new.P.s. I've had three works selected for the Byard Art Open, details of exhibition to follow shortly...
Through a lens darkly
My work is getting darker, more gloomy, claustrophobic, misty, myopic even. Perhaps it is the time of year - today after all is the shortest day (the winter solstice, the night of the 21st as I write), and I prefer to work in natural light. The darker it gets outside the closer I need to get to my work. I appear to be avoiding clarity in preference for an overall infusion of subdued tonalities and dissolving textures; creating a distant hum rather than a distinct sound (taking the original meaning of tone).
I have also been avoiding the usual visual dynamic of composition - there are few if any focal points. Composition should be used as a means to guide or control the viewer's gaze, and yet I am denying this element (firstly for myself). I prefer to let my eyes travel over, scan, survey, speculate, pause and then be drawn to or arrive at a previously ignored or unseen detail - which leads to the next stage of developmemt. My only allowance to composition seems to be in a need for symmetry or balance.
Little to report, only possibilities at present. These (nine in total) are very small tablets (gesso on calico on wood) at 30 x 30cm. I'm still finding my way out of the fog I've created.
Dark, fraught, an oppressive shape emerging from the right?
Rivulets and puddles (of paint) messily join hands?
Is that a flurry of snow, sweeping across the fences?
A strong north-easterly wind ravages across the vista?I've been dipping into Roland Barthes 'Camera Lucida' - for the third or fourth time. I've never managed to read it in one hit even though it's a slim volume; the language although lyrical, perhaps through translation seems stilted or too 'abrupt' in places, and his bitesize insights make for episodic reading. I'm intrigued by his notion of retracing or traversing history from the moment a photograph is taken (the moment it represents in time) - not just what led to this point, but also what became of or happened next?Of course, photography is through a single (fixed in focus) lens and as such its part in history could be seen to follow a linear path - but perhaps not. I view the world with two lenses, and so my own perceptions (through time and memory) are more layered, varying in depth and emphasis, at times distorted or dissipated. There must be a methodology to my avoidance of visual lucidity in painting - wanting more of an overall sensation than a clear snapshot. I begin with a rough haze, slowly moving around, forwards (or backwards) to arrive at a (perhaps the original) moment of clarity or relevance.I'm rambling again, but hey, this is a journal, not an essay. What am I asking Santa for this Christmas - a new camera?? Binoculars would seem a better option...
Dear Artist
I've recently had this painting, Edgescape #8, selected for the annual Artsway Open Exhibition. If you go to see this exhibition, do drop by again to tell me what you think of the show.
Artsway Open 05 exhibition. Edgescape #8 is hanging (darkly) by the archway.The exhibition runs from 3 December 2005, at Artsway, Sway, Hants, until 19 February 2006 (closed from 19 December to 5 January 2006).
I've found this painting very difficult to photograph. The colours are quite muted from dark, earthy browns to ochre and grey, and the surface is quite textured and glistening in places, throwing the light off in different angles. It's been over a year in the making and now when I look at it, I can see it is only a small vision of something much bigger. If only I had more space (and resources) in which to work much bigger.I also received a generic rejection letter from an arts organisation in which it was decided that your submission was not as strong as others in terms of quality. All artists have to deal with rejection, but on this occasion I was disgruntled with their use of the term quality since it is so subjective. I would rather they were more diplomatic by saying my application was not what the selection panel were looking for and then elucidate on their specific selection criteria. Does quality mean sophisticated materials, high-brow concepts or visual outcomes? Or is quality by definition more elusive, subject to contemporary styles and tastes in art?Much contemporary art is rooted in ideas or concepts using sophisticated methods of delivery, but I am concerned with the very nature of crude, mundane, everyday materials - basic, humble - unsophisticated. I hope to produce in the process of engagement, outcomes which question notions of quality, visual aesthetic or perfection in a very material sense. White cube installations with their walls of video, projections, light shows, sound loops or satellite links do not convey the artist's personal reasoning behind the art, since the materials used are so, well.. very impersonal - you have to read the catalogue to fully relate to the work, and even then the exhibition blurb is cloaked in hyberbole and curatorial artspeak - but I'm wooed by the engagement with seemingly global issues in an often highly technical and elaborate way. Is this an artform born out of a "virtual" needy generation, which relies on the abstracted reality of TV to give a true picture of the way we do or should live? Are we relying on technology to enable a fresh view of our world? The painterly drips and poured layers, erased traces and accretion of surface texture provides physical evidence of a more discreet and intuitive thought process - in response to the emotions and memories of a particular place or time. It is made complicated only by my own interaction with the processes - no more, no less. What am I trying to say? That my perception of the environment is not yet definite or resolved, but organic and open to change? Some research is in order, and I think perhaps less philosophical ramblings and more dogmatic realism would help me on my journey, but I can take some comfort from the opening salutation Dear Artist using a capital A...