Completed Painting: 'Untitled 4 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 4 (Constructed City)', Acrylic, Screen Print & Paper Collage on Panel,
60 cm x 60 cm, 2020

These 'Constructed City' paintings are still hardly rapid in their emergence, but at least things are still gradually progressing.  Here's '4' - the latest to be completed since the sorry lock-down saga began, and the second with these slightly larger proportions.  While writing about its predecessor, I intimated that scale definitely felt like a bit of an issue with these images - although I'm still to fully analyse why that might be, to my own satisfaction.  I'm sure that it's partly to do with the relative size of various painterly marks - and perhaps how perceptions alter when a more precisionist manner of working is adopted.  However, I still suspect it has something to do with general confidence too - which isn't necessarily as easily addressed in purely mechanistic terms.

In the latter case, the only real solution I know is to keep working with an open mind - and to take whatever momentum can be extracted from whatever bits of perceived progress do occur.  Dwelling on negatives is clearly futile - that I do know [1.].  Luckily, this painting feels like it may offer more than a little encouragement, in that respect.  My discussion of '3', also covered some of the difficulties I'd had in resolving that particular painting, and the ways in which doing so resulted in a rather different kind of image from that originally intended.  This newest version was hardly without its element of struggle, also.  However, in this case, the difficulties came early on, and mostly involved the establishment of that fragmented silver and white 'ground'.  Once that was resolved, and the process of dividing it with further collaged printed elements, things flowed with an encouraging fluidity.  The result was a painting which (I think) feels much less laboured -  and one which was resolved with a much lighter touch overall.  Surprisingly, for the painting in this little group with the least prior planning, to date - it also feels a bit closer to what I might have been hoping for when I set off up this road.

Ultimately, what I'm really describing is really just what has long been called 'The Creative Process'.  Many might also regard it as stuff that should just remain in the artist's head - rather than being self-indulgently dribbled all over the internet.  No one ever said all this was supposed to be easy - after all, and most creative practitioners will affirm that you have to  hack through a lot of frustrating terrain to get to the good stuff.  Whether or not that really is worthy of public discussion, and whether or not this really is some of 'the good stuff' - I'll leave for others to decide.  Maybe it's just another step along the way - and perhaps, merely some of the better stuff.  But, for now, whatever it is - I'll take it.

[1.]:  Over numerous older posts, I've discussed the various self-defeating mental road blocks I used to habitually erect as impediments to producing work - or to deriving much satisfaction from those things I did complete.  I've also reflected on how much more successfully I've managed to power on through them, in recent years - even when perceived difficulties arise.  Each time I prove that point to myself anew, the old version of events (and the need to rehearse all my old insecurities) feels even less relevant.  'Nuff said.