macro & micro

Since 2006, I have incorporated video as a fundamental element in my artistic practice, they fuel my paintings and prints. To me, responding to video is akin to responding to nature – it’s all visual stimuli. These videos can also stand alone, yet also contribute to my installations alongside photos, paintings, and prints.

Working with video parallels working with paint in intriguing ways. I am consistently concerned with achieving an impactful presence and power, as well as generating interest through intricate detail, spatial arrangement, tonal variation, and colour. There’s a continuous dialogue, even a battle, between my artistic vision and the natural direction the video naturally wants to take. Understanding what the work requires, pushing its boundaries, refusing to settle for ‘easy,’ and confronting its challenges are all familiar aspects of the creative struggle that ultimately yield rewarding outcomes, often leading to unexpected realisations.

All the imagery in my videos originates from the camera lens and reflects a ‘seen’ reality, although many would describe them as abstract – a quality I appreciate for its ambiguity of origin.

John Berger observed that while a film is always moving forwards, a photo is retrospective, freezing and capturing past moments, holding them, unchanging. A photo can be viewed as endlessly or as briefly as the viewer desires; a film, or video, has a limited length, we stop viewing when the film ends – of course the viewer can be totally absorbed, but for a limited period. The process could be repeated, film even paused, but the experience seems to be diluted when compared to that of a static photo – ‘time’ is directed by the filmmaker or video-artist, not only the content and the formal elements.

In our technological world inundated with digital imagery, many only engage with visuals for fleeting moments. In this context it is interesting that paintings demand a different level of attention, one that may be challenging for many. Videos, on the other hand, are more accessible to a broader audience.

I am fascinated with the sublime versus the beautiful, and whether my work can convey these concepts; back in the day whilst researching the origins of the phenomenon, little did I know that I would be living in the town where the philosopher who first discussed the concept was MP. Edmund Burke’s book of 1757: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful has strongly impacted how and why I make art. Burke believed that the sublime was “the strongest passion,” he looked down on the beautiful, claiming that it was “merely prettiness”. While some may perceive my work as beautiful on the surface, it often conceals darker themes and perhaps hints at the ‘terror’ associated with the sublime. This dual nature – beauty masking depth – is what imbues my work with its power. However, I don’t claim that my work is inherently sublime; that interpretation depends on the openness of the viewer.

My current video series delves into the theme of ‘self’ through the exploration of my blood – its flow, movement, reaction to air and heat, and the way it appears under different lighting conditions. These initial explorations spark numerous ideas and possibilities for further development. Currently, I’m captivated by the beautiful delicate details and subtle marks captured in the videos, but love that they shroud the darker theme of my current work.

Developing my work in isolation is, well, isolating. It is great to be back at the art collective in my home town, AHH, Art Happens Here.

When I lived in the Pyrenees my studio was in a large barn joining my house, a lot of space, but I worked alone… oddly there were many other contemporary artists working in neighbouring villages, performance and installation artists, and we collaborated often, so I never felt alone.

On moving back to the UK I returned to Oxford as I had some contacts and there were quite a few artists’ collectives I could join. I had a studio at Magdalen Road Studios and was a member of OVADA, being part of a community had a strong impact on my work, I had the time and space to strengthen my vision and found the many collaborations enriching for my practice.

Leaving Oxford for North Yorkshire was a tough decision. I had hoped to join a studio nearby, perhaps York, but the contemporary art scene seems more bubbling than boiling. Last year I was fortunate to spend some time on a residency at AHH, an oasis for exciting, challenging artists; it was a great experience and now I am working in a studio there until the summer.

I am at the stage of my exploration into my blood series that I need to experiment with video. Hopefully these videos will fuel some drawings, I’m thinking charcoal, made up of visceral, expressive marks.

Making good art is not only a struggle, but a bloody nightmare. I agree with Damien Hirst on this one: “Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There’s no better feeling. It’s beauteous. But it’s always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.” His sentiments, I guess, have been felt by all artists who have that battle with the work to not settle with easy and comfortable – those who want to push the work to the limit, take risks, refuse to fall back on a formula and create the unexpected.

My new series of paintings based on my blood cells have been 18 months in the making, longer, as all my work and experiences before have fuelled them. Living with ideas concerning the work, ruminating on each stage, impacts the process of making, resulting in work with many layers and facets.

These lofty ideals have been wrapped up in technical challenges. My technique is rooted in the tradition of Poussin and Turner: glazing beautiful surfaces to create great luminosity. I have always wanted my paintings to glow, with the darks retaining contrast and visual interest, and one glaze too many kills this. So, this series of six one metre square paintings have been glazed, rubbed back many times, sworn at, violently scrubbed and delicately glazed – details that had disappeared carefully re-defined.

It is important that the paintings work from a distance as striking silhouettes, but also close up with intricate details. I see them as one stage in the exploration of my being, self-portraits in a way, seemingly abstract (whatever that means), but with a strong basis in reality – the paintings are literally illustrations of my blood cells. I say that, but relish in the subtle references to the Romantic landscape tradition.

Making art should be fun and there should be a playful element – no restrictions, few expectations, open experimentation. I decided to cut up some of the engravings and create collages (well, technically montages as no glue was involved), I positioned the various cut up prints and photographed them.

What I discovered was that the simpler compositions were the most powerful: a contrast of forms (intricate, busy and detailed next to empty and simple) and dark next to light.

Back in the day, I said goodbye to my pictorial crutch: horizons, which easily enabled a contrast between light and dark (symbolic for me, more on that in another post). My tutor at the time (Chris Orr at the RCA), told me that if I abandoned the sky/land format, my zooms of nature could retain the light/dark element and be even stronger – all I had to do was look for that contrast in the all-over surface of marks and textures. He was right, of course. The challenge is always there and I’m always pushing myself, and the work, to find that contrast and balance in my images.

The new series of compositions based on the collages will be painted on one metre square canvases, textures made with carborundum grit, glue and gesso and in a circular format. Each one will include a fluorescent flat colour which will contrast with the more muted colour of the texture.

Printing the engravings has revealed many new possibilities. The quality of the engraved lines is extraordinary, very much like a drypoint, with the ink not only collecting in the intaglio cut, but in the burr of the aluminium resulting a beautiful soft, velvety line. I also added drypoint to enrich the contrast of line quality.

The ‘happy accidents’ (the thing that inspires me most about printmaking) occur most when printing with two plates, the first being a pseudo aquatint created by applying caustic soda to specific areas of the aluminium. I inked this up in a colour: pink, yellow, teal… and then printed the second darker engraved plate on top. So many unexpected surfaces and ink juxtapositions evolved – and far more exciting than had I planned them.

Since making proofs, I have editioned the plates ready for exhibiting.

I recently acquired a book on the textile designer Tibor Reich, he was big in the 50s and his company, Tibor, is still going; he took mundane photos of close-ups of nature (mud, bark etc.) and repeated them to create beautiful designs – familiar territory for me, inspirational all the same. I decided to play with mirroring my prints digitally, unexpected images appeared which worked well on many levels: powerful forms when viewed from a distance and when viewed close up, intricate patterns and shapes reminiscent of Boschian creatures and flora.

It has been a year since I first made the photos of my blood cells and the period of time for me to ruminate and live with the images has been important: to reduce the risk of them being merely illustrations, they needed to not only be distanced from their origin as photos of cells, but needed to take on a life of their own, developing through the creative process.

I am now starting a series of large engravings (80cm by 140cm) inspired by the mirrored prints. The larger scale will give me much more scope for ‘happy accidents’ and will hopefully result in more powerful and exciting work.