Completed Painting: 'Closed 2'

It interests me how ideas can sit around the back of your mind for ages and then snowball into something more important when their time arrives.  Things are always better left to develop at their own pace and allowed to emerge naturally.  Inspiration rarely strikes when striven for and an extensive bank of visual memories and the ability to make subconscious connections can be an artist’s best friends.

'Closed 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2012

A while back I showed my painting ‘Closed 1’ both in progress and finished along with its photographic source images.  I had photographed the red industrial shutters some years ago and assumed they were images in their own right.  However, when I started to consider different aspects of the theme ‘closed’ earlier this year they suggested themselves as an ideal motif and took on greater significance. 

I was moderately satisfied with ‘Closed 1’ but felt there was something a little obvious or facile about it too.  Consequently, I started work on ‘Closed 2’ immediately in an attempt to discover why.

'Closed 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage
on Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2012

I was happy with the composition comprising parallel vertical bands slightly abstracted from the original subject but this time I chose to vary their extent and distribution slightly in reference to the join between two shutters.  I also liked the idea of an essentially monochrome panel that could still display a wealth of nuance and visual detail within its own narrow parameters.  These characteristics all appeal to my old love of formal abstraction and an emphasis on the picture plane.  It seemed perfectly logical to work from the blue sketchbook study and related source photos I already had.

Seemingly, my issues lay with the textual elements and their interaction with the ground.  I retained the three modes of formal, semi-official and totally unauthorised text.  This time though I worked on degrading and integrating them into the ground more fully.  The subtext ‘Capital’ remains legible but only obliquely whilst the orange graffiti is now denuded of decipherable meaning to become primarily a formal motif.  Generally, it's become harder to discriminate between words on the surface and those floating above or lying beneath it. 

Obviously, ‘Closed 2’ is a refinement of, rather than a dramatic departure from, the first version but, I think, an improvement.  It seems I was after something harder to read (in several senses) and that I currently want words to be textural as well as textual.