Completed Painting: 'Vestige 7'

'Vestige 7', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil, Misc. Solvents &
 Decorator's Caulk on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

I’d be lying if I said I actually needed any more work for the upcoming ‘A Minor Place’ exhibition, in which I’ll be exhibiting soon, alongside Andrew Smith and Shaun Morris.  There might actually be enough to fill my third of the show twice over, and the biggest issue feels like it’s around which pieces to actually hang.  Thus, I didn’t actually need to make any more ‘Vestige’ paintings in this little period of calm before the comparative storm of realising the show.  That’s not really the point though, is it?  A properly creative process shouldn’t be about merely meeting deadlines, or fulfilling commitments, even if they are self-generated.  In my view, it should never involve the thought, “that’ll do, then”, either.

The fact is, there are a couple of other pictorial issues I always wanted to address within the ‘Always The Same – Always Different’ model of the ‘Vestiges’ series.  With a few days of blessed School Summer break remaining, and the exhibition arrangements progressing, it felt only natural I should address them.  My hunch is that completing numbers ‘7’ and ‘8’ should allow me to assess the series properly, and whether it really achieved what I hoped it would.  Only then, will I decide if it’s time to draw some kind of line under the project.

Anyway, here’s ‘Vestige 7’ in it’s completed state, (‘8’ is still in progress, but hopefully nearing completion).  At first glance, it may break relatively little new ground.  It majors on the same ‘revealed rectangle’ motif within a square format, of all the others, and is just another take on the near-monochrome palette of the overall series, (predominantly dark again, here).  The recurring fragments of text (or at least, of individual characters), are there too, albeit pretty well buried, this time.  The real progression is in that partial squiggle within the central rectangle.

'Vestige 5', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Ink, Spray Enamel,  French
Polish, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

'Vestige 6', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Adhesive Tape, Spray Enamel,
French Polish, Pencil, Coloured Pencil & Ballpoint Pen on Panel, 60 cm X
60 cm, 2016

The origin of these pieces was in the revealed ghost-spaces, or residual frames that one regularly encounters in the urban environment - and which represent the loss, or removal of some piece of signage or posted information.  They are, a form of palimpsest symbolising the notion of lost voices or forgotten meanings, as well as the passage of time and the accompanying entropic processes acting on the material of the city.  When I started to pursue that idea, I identified three main categories of the motif.  The first two are, the simple clean or differently coloured patch, and the open frame of grimy adhesive tape residue.  ‘7’ represents the third category – namely, the flattened squiggle of failed mastic adhesive.  I see these squashed serpents and blotted blobs wherever I go.  They do of course, represent relatively recent advances in adhesives chemistry, being, literally, ‘a quick fix’ - if you like.

North Leicester, May 2014

Gravelly Hill, Birmingham, July 2016

Without the time to undertake an extensive process of R&D, I toyed with a couple of possible methods of achieving my squiggle, before simply resorting to the obvious solution of Decorator’s Caulk, squirted through a mastic gun and squashed under a sheet of plastic (not exactly rocket science, is it?).  In the event, this was partially successful, with much of the upper portion failing to release properly, but a sufficiently extensive lower portion remaining to tell the story.  I’m employing a refinement of this method for ‘8’, in the hope that a little more mastic survives next time.  However, in reality, I like the somewhat hit and miss nature of all this, and the fact I was left with what I was left with.  The injection of an element of proper random accident feels very appropriate.  If nothing else, it allows me to add yet another ingredient to the ever lengthening list of media used in these pieces.  It may be time to just start labeling everything ‘Mixed Media’, I suspect.

Design: Chris Cowdrill

'A Minor Place' will take place between Saturday, 3 - Sunday 11 September at: Artists Workhouse, Studley, Warwickshire, B80 7AU.