Inedible Culinary Exercises

Why think about an apple when you can think about a tree?

In a departure from the process of taking food and allowing it to become medium, I am currently considering landscape. Landscape draws several parallels to still-life in that it’s a discipline that is steeped in art history, but can be re-told in order to become relevant in the 21^st Century.

With my food works, I was able to take individual foodstuffs and manipulate them so that, whilst their meaning remained the same, they were able to simultaneously mean something else and become liberated from their original physicality. Can we apply this to landscape? When the components of landscape are removed from their surroundings, and applied to something else, what are we left with?

I propose that by manipulating these components just enough so that they are to become perfectly usable as paints, whilst still enabling them to retain their intrinsic natural elements, then what you will be left with would be a medium with infinite possibilities which can be applied to a surface and at once represent visually whatever subject an artist wishes, whilst also retaining the subject of landscape: Landscape will still exist – incognito, still and subtle – but imbedded within whatever subject the paint is said to render.

Basically, I’m doing what I did with food, only with landscape, except here I am regarding the components of landscape in a richer way. This, in turn, has allowed me to ask critical questions of my food-based practice. Why am I choosing the food I am choosing? Are the components of a meal more important than the end product? Does an audience consider the same food relevant as me? These questions would not have emerged if I did not take a slight departure from food to consider landscape: Therefore, my professional development may have stagnated. This confirms my belief that it is important to embrace whatever challenges come your way: If you don’t, you may end up creating things of no value to an audience.

Exercise #2 – Delicious Paint

I consider the process of making paint out of food to be the spine of my creative output. That is, it is a fundamental part of what I do and acts as a source – a returning point should a particular artistic endeavour fail.

The very notion of creating paint out of food interests me for several reasons. There is a certain juxtaposition to be found in the complex processes found within making paint and the purity of the end product. Indeed, I would suggest that paint, when produced manually, contains as much artistic merit as paint applied to a surface.

The fact that it is made from food, however, is of the greatest interest. The very notion of food contains within it a vast array of social, political, environmental and religious implications. And individual foodstuff contains implications of its own. This means the paint is forever charged with such notions, even when applied to a surface and used to represent objects and concepts far removed from its own.

Identity is another issue of interest when considering these paints. I believe that there is a certain evasive quality these paints possess which can manipulate subject matter and intent. For example, if I use paint made out of apples to depict a pear. What has actually been painted? Apples or pears? Such theoretical questions are something I wish to exploit in order to further my artistic practice.

Exercise #1 – Food and Light

Food and light draw parallels to each other as both are at once a necessity and can be used creatively. A humble strike of a match equates to the basic nourishment of bread, whilst innovative light instillations compare to the meticulous presentations of haute cuisine. I wish to illustrate these similarities and render them visible.

In my ‘Spectrum’ pieces, food objects have been painted in the colours of the spectrum and placed on a mirror. This allows light – or at least the concept of light – to exist as a tangible entity, whilst simultaneously allowing the objects to transcend their physical purpose and attain value.

The use of mirrors is important because it allows the concept of light remain elusive, whilst further allowing the food objects to exceed their physical boundaries.

In my ‘Reflection’ pieces, food objects have been painted in the colours of the spectrum and printed onto paper. This is intended to echo the notion of diffuse reflection, where a light ray is reflected at many angles and so the image is altered.

In the beginning there were broken dreams of animation and Pablo Picasso.

In October 2008 I embarked – somewhat vainly – upon a Masters in Animation, having had no formal knowledge on the subject and no real desire to learn and understand the principles of animation practice.

An absurd idea, then? Well, the reason for embarking upon such a task was because I felt at a loss with my fine art practise. Having completed a B.A in Fine Art in 2007, I felt that I had reached a point where a fundamental change to my approach was necessary in order to sustain my professional development.

Animation is, of course, a perfectly plausible method of not only forming a relationship with properties of food, but also potentially inducing sensation. However, I found that my inexperience in the discipline of animation, coupled with my disregard for the fundamentals, meant that I was only capable of producing animations that portrayed food at face-value.

The intention of my animations was to render the scent of food in a visual way. Yet what I produced was a banal manifestation of the narrative found in the process of eating. Instantly, as with fine art, I became disillusioned with the practice of animation. I didn’t even take it upon myself to save these films. Nothing remains other than a few salvaged ideas and I wished to pursue in other ways.

Despite this, I was still intrigued by food. Chiefly because the implications surrounding food are boundless: Food encompasses everything. It is at once and something which can be regarded as a necessity and a luxury: For every vital nutrient and calorie it provides it is also able to engage with us on an evocative and sensual level. I found myself in an existential state between being delighted by the contextual possibilities of food in art, and frustrated by my inability to create engaging and, crucially, innovative work involving food. Change was required, and a change which involved to reverting back to the principles of Fine Art.

I found further resolve in my vocational commitments, working as an Information Assistant at Tate Liverpool during the exhibition ‘Picasso: Peace and Freedom.’ (21st April – 30th August 2010.) The fundamental act of being able to observe and become sensitised to the works on display for the entire duration of the exhibition allowed me to establish a relationship with Picasso and in particular, acquaint myself with plentiful Still Life works. From this a hypothesis occurred: Rather than simply taking the notion of food and trying to create animations, would it not be of more value to consider the principle of ‘Still Life,’ seeking new directions that are innovative and will allow the concept of Still Life to transcend it’s face-value.

And so, some 5 years after undertaking an M.A in Animation, I find myself as an emerging professional artist: Equipped with an M.A – not in Animation but Fine Art, having changed courses – and with the wish to ignite the language of Still Life, allowing it to become tangible and relevant. I also wish to exploit the endearing and mystifying language of scent. The concept of synesthesia – something which has been foremost in my practice since 2008 – is a very plausible route into the idea of representing scent in a visual way. It essentially regards a confusion of the senses, allowing scent to be inherently visible to an individual. If this were to be extracted and applied successfully then new and innovative directions can be uncovered.

In ‘Bread Bed’, I have created a significant starting point and reliable source that can be utilised should some artistic endeavours reach a dead end. Loaded within this piece comes not only the notion that food can be used as a medium, which in turn allows it to transcend its original purpose, but also the notion that scent, and the evocations contained within scent, can be represented visually. Toast is comforting, and the smell of toast induces and confirms such thoughts.