Completed Painting: 'Consumed 3'

'Consumed 3', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2014

In a couple of recent posts I discussed ‘Time Passages’, the live art project I undertook at Melbourne Festival 2014.  As I pointed out, one of my slightly selfish motivations for devoting much of the summer to its preparation was to shake up my creative activities a little by working to a slightly different agenda.  It was an opportunity to combat a certain staleness which I’d been feeling for a while generally.  It appears to have worked as, once the remaining loose ends were tied up, I produced this new painting, ‘Consumed 3’, fairly quickly, (by my standards), and with relatively little agonising.

'Consumed 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 X 100 cm, 2014

‘Consumed 3’ follows on from the previous two 'Consumed' pieces already produced earlier this year.  Like them, it should technically be termed a collage really, being composed almost totally of torn and layered paper.  Paint is never totally absent however, and the kind of visual and formal thinking they represent, is much the same as I might employ when using fluid media.  To be honest, I’ve given up being too precious about all this, choosing instead to use whatever medium feels most appropriate at a given time, and just enjoying whichever intrinsic physical characteristics may apply.  For all my recent, tentative attempts to branch out into video, etc., a large part of me remains wedded to static imagery and wall-based artefacts.  Exactly how they are realised remains largely up for grabs, however.

'Consumed 2', Acrylics & paper Collage On Panel, 100 X 100 cm, 2014

Just like ‘Consumed 1’ & ‘2’, this one also evolved organically, without any conscious preparatory work and its final appearance was largely dictated by instinct and the accumulation of chance events or happy accidents along the way.  This method seems to have served me pretty well this year and, whilst always a little wary of any comfort zone, for now I’m happy enough to be in a bit of a groove with these pieces.  Whilst the basic working procedures may be pretty similar from one to another, each new attempt appears to be throwing up fresh formal or painterly challenges, so I don’t think I’m working on automatic pilot with them just yet.

'Time Passages' (Details), Acrylics & Paper Collage On Board, Variable Dimensions, 2014

In this case, the obvious development is the reintroduction of a little more colour.  This came in part from my love of the Duck-Egg Blue backing of most of the advertising posters I salvage, and the preponderance of Co-op Green printed fragments I had at my immediate disposal.  That blue always seems like a surprisingly soft, pastoral colour to find in fairly gritty locations, (often in large expanses), as large advertisments decompose.  I think this piece is also a slight hangover from the small elements of ‘Time Passages’ that were inserted into the individual frames.  Some of the backings of those displayed a vaguely similar palette and general mood, but were necessarily lashed together in fairly short order.  Perhaps I just wanted to go back and revisit that in a more considered manner.

Partly, the  text in those elements may have also inspired the little red asterisk that completely transformed this whole piece in the last hour of its production [1.].  It felt pleasing enough, but somehow just too polite, until I dropped that in on a whim.  I love the way that a single smidgeon of primary, complementary colour woke the whole thing up.  Purely by coincidence, I was interested to see that my friend Shaun Morris had done something similar in one of his recent paintings.  Great mind’s eh, Shaun?

Shaun Morris, Title Unknown, Oil On Canvas, 
150 X 90 cm, 2014

In fact, instinct played a large part in my decision to call this piece complete when I did.  I had imagined including more black letter forms, breaking out from the large block at top left in some way to scatter across the whole composition.  Instead something told me to put in the red asterisk and just stop.  Knowing when to walk away without over-doing things is one of the hardest things any painter can learn, I think.  Perhaps making that earlier idea work can become a little challenge for another day instead.

As in all these ‘Consumed’ pieces, the textual elements themselves carry an anagrammatic ‘hidden’ message relating to ideas about consumer Capitalism.  There’s nothing particularly profound about that and it relates to their origins in the appearance and multiple messages of torn advertising posters in a fairly obvious way.  I don’t need to spell it all out any more than that really, - the words and phrases are there for those that want to find them.

That’s ‘Consumed 3’ then.  It is what it is really, - a reasonably pleasing little 'painting' whose birth was relatively un-traumatic.  Mostly, it makes me want to crack on with the next one.

[1.]:  Along with some tiny red printed fragments that just appeared as part of the collage process.  These things are rarely clear cut in reality.