The Cultural Tourist

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What is it in art that inspires you? Have you seen or experienced something recently that has made you want to run back to your studio or kitchen table to start making?

I’ve been feeling a bit flat lately and didn’t really have any ideas as to what I was going to be making next. I’ve been finding the process of exhibiting rather an empty experience so I have been seeking a way of instilling some more focus, gravitas and thinking within my work.

To do this, other than reading, attending talks and a wider spread of exhibitions, I have been looking at courses to see whether there was something there, specifically focusing on art and philosophy.

There are definitely a few avenues I could follow but then there is the reality of cost. I’m not sure I can justify the expense, particularly when I have kids who are accumulating considerable student debts that seem likely to need even more from me going forward in this downward turning economic climate.

There was a glimmer of light a couple of weeks ago though. I was on a short trip to Paris with my other half and we went to the Cubism exhibition at the Pompidou centre. I can honestly say it is possibly one of the best exhibitions I have ever been to. It was extensive and incredibly comprehensive including work leading up to the Cubism movement and later work having been influenced by Cubism. It included a fantastic range of artists, paintings and sculpture.

I was blown away by a Cezanne portrait of a women in a blue dress (darn it, didn’t write down the exact title). Anyway this painting absolutely glowed. It was at the start of the exhibition and set the tone in terms of the level of quality to expect going forward.

Among my favourite pieces from the exhibition were a few from the collage and assemblage sections with work from Juan Gris. These were quite small, very quiet and subtle. It is these pieces that have got me thinking about what I’m going to explore next, perhaps not surprising given the nature of my own work.

A friend of mine had given me lots of sheets of paper that was used for packing furniture and these are perfect to stick on the studio wall and start collaging. I have started to play with the collages and mix them with paint and drawing and investigate what the interactions between these might suggest. As it happens I had just completed a much larger collage in my studio, doing exactly this (but on canvas), so have some idea as to some of the outcomes of some of the mark making. The difference going forward is that my new work will be on the packing paper and this adds a different, more temporal and fragile feeling to the final pieces. There is less planning to what I am doing, and more a case of working instinctively.

As for the course, I’m still definitely thinking about that one but would welcome any suggestions.

As I write, the uncertainty surrounding Brexit continues. Like many people, I am finding it hard to digest, to understand what means what and what I should believe. There is no stake in the ground as the political surface we stand on feels shaky and kind of like quicksand. I get the feeling that this constantly shifting paradigm is going to be the way forward.

My current painting efforts attempt to capture this. I’m not trying to be deliberately political. It is more of a reflection of a state of mind. Entities move back and forth. Brush marks suggest variations but no sooner appear than fade away. Twisting, swirling, falling, fading. The more you peer, the more you see and it’s impossible to unpick the ends. These uncertainties are set against much more definite shapes and marks that make their statement and display an energy.

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Last time I wrote I was going back and forth deciding how I should approach the 2 large blank canvases that were resting against the wall in my studio.

I finally decided I was going to approach one by using collage and the other as a pure painting. It is now nearly the end of December and not a lot has happened – certainly in respect to the collage anyway. Christmas, family commitments and 2 exhibitions I have been involved in rather took over.

However, before this hiatus began I did do some painting. I used a digital montage I created as my starting point and then very quickly and loosely tried to respond to this using just paint. My idea at the time was just to get some marks down onto the canvas and then use those marks and the spaces in-between to trigger further development and experimentation. This has not happened though. The initial marks I have made definitely have a life of their own and created a barrier preventing me from moving forward. I am hoping when I return to the studio my artist block will have diminished. However I do like this initial painting. It has an energy about it and portrays a kind of language I wasn’t expecting.

Shown here are 3 compositions. The first is an earlier painting on which I have managed to play with the space unheeded by my own painting restrictions. The other 2 are the original digital composition I created and the resultant painting which somehow is doing things for itself.

I am carrying on making art using primarily 2 different processes. The first is using my usual photo montage technique, but then ripping the image up, collaging it on to a surface and then painting within it. The second way is pure painting, using thin layers of acrylic paint, followed by oil paint, then playing within the dynamics and images I see and imagine within these layers.

I have 2 large blank canvases sitting against a wall, waiting to be worked upon. I am undecided as to what technique I should apply to each of these and am wondering whether I should simply just do one of each. My experiments have been confined to quite small pieces and I am relatively happy with both lots of results. No doubt switching to a much larger scale will bring its own set of issues. Also I have to bear in mind, that normally it is entirely appropriate that my work is small scale. The subject matter is the ordinary, the mundane, and the overlooked. But do I take my subject matter to a larger scale? ‘I am not sure this will even work?

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Scale can say a lot about a piece. I am fairly sure that the insignificance of my original image will be lost, but so what! It may make for an interesting dynamic. Process will dominate and lead the way I suspect so the piece will become a transformative exercise. Let it go, I say!

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Layers of meaning

The art I normally make consists of layers of photography, drawing and paint. Sometimes the photographs are digitally altered using Photoshop, sometimes they are not. Sometimes these photographs are printed or transferred to a surface whole and then paint, pen or pencil applied to these surfaces afterwards. Other times, the photographs may be torn up and applied to the surface like a collage, with deliberate gaps and abrasions upon the surface. Then when I paint or draw upon the work, these gaps and abrasions become an important component. Either way, my art consists of layers whether it be digital, photographic, collage, painting or drawing.

These layers play an important role in that they act as a kind of veiled curtain where there is no clarity. This allows for my imagination to step in and fill in the gaps. The uncertainty and incompleteness provides a springboard for all sorts of possibilities to develop. It is very much like staring into the clouds and seeing an ever-changing mural in the sky full of faces, animals, objects and places.

I have been well aware for many years, that this openness and temporality is critical to help me develop my ideas. However I have been keen to try this approach with using just paint and the immediacy of the environment around me to see what sort of effect this might have on my practice.

I am carrying on focusing on buildings and interiors, observing the the piecemeal view we have in our daily existence, those bits we can see out of the corner of our eye, the suggestions of objects that remain unformed, the spaces within spaces, the ceiling, floors, surfaces, furniture, shapes, colours and textures. The recording of these things with paint is deliberately not accurate. I’m not trying to duplicate the environment but rather use the suggestion of what is around me in combination with paint to evoke alternative places and something other.

The paintings displayed are examples of my latest endeavours.