The Cultural Tourist

I’ve been scratching my head trying to think what to write about this month. When I review the art I have been working on it all seems rather paltry, although I know I have been busy. This has led me to review more in detail, what actually have I been doing in respect to art this last month?

The truth of the matter is that the everyday tasks of an artist contain many things and not just the making of art.

It does involve doing a fair amount of admin. I realised that it has been a while since I had updated my website. This is something I believe is important to do. I needed to photograph all completed works for 2018 so far and then load those up. To be honest, I don’t include everything, only those I am happy with. I’m contemplating having a ‘work-in-progress’ tab on my website as my work tends to take a long time to make and maybe this might be something that other people may find interesting. I also needed to update both my ‘News’ and ‘Exhibitions’ sections. Also I think it’s important to review the whole site periodically and give it a bit of a prune. I ask myself the question – ‘is it reflective of the art that I make and clear as to why I make it?’

I’ve been entering a few open calls. This is always a time consuming task and very often it feels like I’m putting together a job application. It usually involves some research so that the piece I’m entering is a good fit. I don’t see the point in entering a large piece of art if the sponsors have a history of selecting small works or if the space that the exhibition will be in is tiny.

I have recently been involved in an exhibition in The Biscuit Tin Factory in Bermondsey so I was busy sprucing up the work involved for that to make sure it was ready to display. In March I had moved to a new studio and hadn’t quite got myself organised so I have been doing a bit of that – tidying, packaging art pieces carefully, labelling and so on. We are having ‘Open studios’ in June so there will be a certain amount of prep for that across the whole building so I wanted to ensure my own studio is near enough ready.

I have recently joined an artist’s group which essentially means once a month I walk around with some other artists looking at art exhibitions in London and then discuss the work. This is something I do by myself quite frequently but it’s good to do this periodically with other artists to get alternative input and opinions.

I’ve just got involved in interviewing another artist in my studio and writing the interview up which hopefully will be published and disseminated soon. I am very keen to do more of these interviews. I have been saying for quite some time I wanted to include writing as part of my art practice and I see this as one way of doing this. I like it as the attention is focused on someone else and their art. I suppose I would be acting as a kind of conduit and facilitator. I am interested in asking quite detailed questions about someone’s art and their practice and am hoping to avoid art-speak. I initially want to interview people in my studio complex as I’m conscious of the fact that buried away in the studios are all these artists, working intently and passionately on their art but ultimately little is known about them. I think in the vague plan in my head I would like eventually to extend this to other artists I encounter as I do meet some interesting and committed people who would be great to interview.

I have to always think about my next plan of work and what I would need to do to get this started. There does always seem to be quite a long lead up to before I put brush to canvas. It involves researching, photographing, writing, deciding on sizes and materials, bringing in supplies and then preparing my surfaces (which can take ages).

All these things are time-consuming. In the meantime I am still working slowly but surely on my current art pieces. I’m at the stage where I am not sure whether I like quite a few of the pieces I’m working on, but I find this can be a helpful place to be. It allows me to step back and see what else I would like to achieve and re-evaluate what is it I am actually trying to do. The piece I display here is work in progress. I’ve been through a range of stages with it and I have now passed the ‘don’t like it’ stage and on to the ‘oh…I know what I want to try now’ stage. The art piece is called ‘Colour flash’.

I am carrying on with my studio still-life studies. Originally I was going to take a no frills approach and keep it pure and simple. However as I look and as I work, I find it impossible to do so. Embellishment and elaboration start to creep in. The more I look, things suggest themselves to me in the form, the decoration, the interplay of light and shadows and the space in which the objects sit.

Having photographed the objects, playing with the digital photographs bring new possibilities. Cropping an image, focusing on one key bit can change the dynamics dramatically. I enjoy slicing up the space and introducing new shapes and shades of colour for no other reason than I can.

Sometimes it a matter of looking at the pattern within the shapes that I see, simplifying them, repeating them, manipulating them. Or it might be an intricate piece of detail on the surface of the objects I want to emphasise.

I’ve been specifically working on a series of very small works (5 inches square). Starting from the point of stretching and preparing the canvas, these small works are like little objects themselves. I transferred my manipulated photos onto them ready to start painting on the surface.

It’s easier to work on an image that has been changed quite dramatically digitally first than one where its remains true to the original source. It becomes something else in which I can study its properties and apply further transformations with paint. This introduces new aspects to explore. It creates a kind of mobility and physicality to the work.

I don’t like to think about it too much. Playfulness and experimentation is important. I’m working in a relatively small studio space but I find my work often ends up evoking places and patterns from other countries – places I have travelled to or want to travel to. These works become in a sense my way of being somewhere else.

My latest series of work is focusing on interiors and objects – specifically my studio and my home. So far I have been looking at my studio but to be honest, I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I’ve been trying to vaguely look at the basic structure and layout of the objects within my studio using watercolour painting and pen drawing. Everything is very loose – broad gestures of shape, pattern and composition. I started to represent certain objects with certain shapes so a kind of system developed. I may not pursue this to any great degree but I do find it rather satisfying.

I start to think about some of the famous artists and how they at some point as they work maybe they used a similar methodology – for example Matisse and Picasso to name just a couple in their development of their portraits and interiors and the simplistic lines and shapes they used to do this. Still life arrangements have and are constantly being used as a method for formal experimentation by artists the world over.

I also think about the work of the contemporary photographer Laura Letinsky – a particular exhibition I went to years ago at the Photographers Gallery in London has stuck with me (called Laura Letinsky: lll Form and Void Full). Her ‘post meal’ still lifes using linen covered tables, food, cutlery and crockery are oddly reminiscent of old masters paintings of old style banquets. However in Letinsky’s photographs the colours are pastel and muted, her shapes often appear semi abstracted, the stains left behind as important as the objects themselves, the importance of space and light. In fact there is very little food to be seen, more of a melancholy suggestion of what has been.

I like the idea of at some point emulating some of the ideas she has used here, the semi abstraction, the colour schemes she has used, the use of positive and negative space, using my studio as the basis. A studio space has its own sense of place. It’s currently freezing in mine and I work with a hot-water bottle stuck under my jumper. There is clothing a plenty, not just for the purposes of necessary rags, but to wear as layers upon layer. Domestic items one would associate from home have made their way in – cushions, dish washing liquid, drying up cloths and various assortments of teas and packaged soups. And fruit. Fruit gets everywhere – mainly orange and apples. It’s important to do something when I am contemplating the making, whether it’s peeling an orange or sipping a cup of tea. There is something beautiful about a studio. Its simplicity of objects sitting within the space. The climbing pipes, the splashes of paint, the surfaces of the walls and floor, the casting of shadows; the basicness of everything.

Like still life, the studio is a frequent subject matter for many artists. It’s a contained environment that can transport the artist to new places and new ventures. What’s more, it’s there, it’s real. There is a purity about it that can be explored.

I’m exhausted. I don’t know whether it’s just a post-Christmas feeling or seeing the end of a particularly challenging year. Depleted of inspiration; I haven’t been anywhere or seen anything to spark an interest. The grey skies mirror my outlook. Various parts of my body seem to shriek in pain and I just want to hibernate under my duvet for a few months. I’m exasperated by people and the most annoying person I find at the moment is me.

I’ve decided my Derbyshire and countryside series of work is complete – certainly for the time-being anyway. It seems so far removed from where I am now that I can hardly believe I made it. I suppose it is this reality that has suggested my next area of investigation, namely the space where I currently occupy the most; my home and my studio – a no frills approach focus on their interiors and objects. I will begin with my studio.

Photographing the objects in my studio ended up with selected frames of studio type bits and pieces in all their tarnished glory. Brushes that have seen better days, plastic bags and containers galore. Finger painted surfaces, legs of chairs and easels, tatty book corners, pens, pencils, paint. Bubble wrap and bits of orange peel. Coffee mugs, coffee and teabags. Shelving and string, old paintings and dish washing liquid. Newspaper and clothing piles. Tacks and nails. Hammers, pliers scissors and measuring tools. Bottles of liquids of various contents. As I note all these things down it occurs to me at just how much has actually made its way into this relatively small interior space. Each item with its own identity and purpose. It’s strangely quite a pleasurable task listing all of these objects. I feel there is a definite potential to explore this idea further. Hurrah, a start!

A change of perspective

How does one get inspiration for new work? What drives the creative process and how are these thoughts developed. How is one’s perspective on a subject formed and how does this change?

Growing up in New Zealand, I ended up doing a Humanities Degree majoring in Education. I was being encouraged at the time by my family to train to be a teacher. Although I did not go down this route I did acquire some interesting knowledge, particularly about some of the principles of how we learn, in particular assimilation and accommodation. When we come across something new in our lives, our brain automatically tries to find a familiarity (a schema) with other things we have learnt – whether this be an experience, a memory, a pattern, whatever. This is the quickest way of learning as the new info just moulds right in. However, if the information we receive is entirely new, then our brains have to create new connections and new schemas in order to accommodate it. This process takes longer.  This is a very simplistic summary but hopefully one gets the gist. Our schemas as children are very simple and over time they develop in complexity and sophistication.

For example, ever since as a child I have always had a particular penchant for Scotland due to the fact my paternal grandparents were from there. Not that I ever met them, they died before I was born. It didn’t stop my childhood imagination taking over. I knew my grandfather was a lowlander and my grandmother a highlander. In my child’s mind I took this to mean that my grandmother lived up the hill and my grandad somewhere at the bottom and one day they happened to meet in the middle. A mixture of growing up, knowledge and experience have adjusted what I know to be the truth but I still remember fondly my childish explanation.

I wonder how my sons see the world, and how this is changing over time. They were born in London and have only lived here so far so experience-wise they don’t know any different. But they are obviously exposed to the media and the news which has considerable influence. I wonder how they perceive their New Zealand heritage, whether they think about it at all? They never mention it. Will this change as they grow older and seek wider pastures and more knowledge about their heritage?

My recent art work developed from a trip to Derbyshire did not just include the local landscape or my reaction to that landscape. I was studying my oldest son as he sat on the ground surveying the scene during one of our trips out and was wondering how he was currently viewing the world in front of him and how this might change as his thought processes matured. I’m in the middle of creating an art piece on this, combining aspects of the landscape, environment and this idea of an individual’s changing perspective.

The attach image is work in progress and I call it ‘Alex’s changing perspective’.