Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 1'

'Untitled (From The New School) 1', Acrylic On Panel, 300 mm X 300 mm X 106 mm, 2017

After several months of tentative beginnings, and with several active projects still yielding little in the way of final product, it's pleasing to actually reveal something finished.  The salient points are as follows:

• This mode of painting is clearly a fairly dramatic departure from everything I've produced in recent years.  It is something that I think of as a somewhat conceptual mode of painting; one in which the strategic adoption of a particular style is a conscious decision which points to an underlying theoretical or philosophical framework.  The deployment of hard-edged quasi-Modernist, semi-abstraction, enjoyable though it may be, extends a little further than the purely visual.

Andrew Smith, 'The New School', Acrylic & Digital Print On Canvas, 2016

• It is also something of a given, as the image is itself a blatant act of appropriation.  In fact, this painting's central motif represents a cleaned-up and slightly developed quotation from Andrew Smith's painting, 'The New School'.  This is clearly a relatively faithful, distillation of Andrew's own collaged allusion to a mid-twentieth century aesthetic and possible hint toward associated ideologies (or the passing thereof).

Andrew Smith, 'Divining Of The Fumes', Acrylic & Digital Print
On Canvas, 2016

Andrew Smith, 'Fracker', Acrylic & Digital Print On Canvas, 2015

'A Minor Place', Artists Workhouse, Studley, Warwickshire, September 2016.
(L.): Shaun Morris, 'Artic Landscape', (R.): Andrew Smith, 'The New School'.

• This act of appropriation is actually intended as but one step in an extended dialogue.  Some time ago, I proposed a project in which Andrew and I would participate in a kind of ongoing remix project, in which each would rework, reinterpret or even physically disrupt the work of the other.  I put this idea on hold, in order to concentrate on my contribution to our 2016 'A Minor Place' exhibition, with Shaun Morris, but was intrigued to discover that  three of Andrew's pieces in the show actually incorporated veiled allusions to my own 'Vestige' paintings.

'Vestige 2', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, Ink, Spray Enamel & Misc Solvents
On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

• Of these, 'The New School' was the one which drew me across the room most rapidly on first viewing, and which triggered, almost immediately, whole new trains of thought, stimulated as much by its allusive title as by its obvious visual appeal.  It also shows clear evidence of having used my own 'Vestige 2' as a clear starting point, and of preserving evidence of that image within the texture of its background fields.

• The importance of 'The New School' as a title, and as an idea, is such that I am currently working on a wider body of work around that theme.  That will reflect not only possible interpretations of that phrase, but also, elliptically, my own daytime employment within a rapidly mutating state education system.  The intention is that this will include elements of photography and writing, as well as painting.

• This piece is clearly representative of the latter strand, but is itself intended as the first of a series of closely-related, but consciously mutating paintings - each derived from that central, architectural motif.  It is proposed that the chosen modes of depiction and paint application should differ from piece to piece, even if only subtly.  This is, of course, yet another take on the idea of 'the-same-but-different' that underpinned all of last year's work.  'Untitled (From The New School) 1' is merely a starting point.

So, it seems to be the case that ideas, and possible responses to them, are currently expanding exponentially before my eyes and in my mind.  As ever, the issue is finding enough hours and energy to effectively digest and act upon them all, but gratifying to know that each burst of creative activity just seems to engender yet more, these days.  To the point indeed, where I no longer even consider not being engaged on at least something, pretty much constantly.