Completed Painting: 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 2'

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 2', Acrylics on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2022

"I was amazed that the world contained people sufficiently different from myself for the manager of the hotel to have urged such a stroll upon me as a form of amusement, for there to be some to whom such a torture-chamber of unfamiliar quarters could actually be an ‘abode of delight’, as the hotel styled itself in its leaflet, possibly with some degree of license, although it was undeniably addressing a wide public whose views it shared. So, to attract such people to the Grand-Hotel of Balbec, it expatiated not only on ‘the exquisite cuisine’ and the ‘entrancing view from the gardens of the Casino’ but on ‘the great god Fashion, whose decrees no man of good breeding will care to flout, unless he does not mind being thought a Philistine.’” [1.]

“These impressions, mingling with the ones I would be experiencing in that other place, on that similar road, and surrounded by all the accessory feelings which were common to both states, and only by them – the sensation of breathing freely, curiosity, the enjoyment of being lazy, a good appetite, cheerfulness – would grow in volume, take on the consistency of a particular type of pleasure, almost a way of existence, one which I seldom had occasion to revisit but within which reawakened memories blended a physically perceived reality with enough remembered, fancied, ungraspable reality for these places I was passing through to give me, not just an aesthetic experience, but a heady desire, however fleeting, to live there for ever.” [2.]

Addendum:

My current working practices do not (by intention) follow a wholly linear or pre-determined path. a 'series' of works may come into being through processes of translation or mediation, with relatively little pre-intention. Progress may be slow and meandering, as opposed to methodically pursuing a set agenda. Just as the past may inform the present/future - so, equally, may a reversal of the temporal/mental flow apply. New readings may bring-about revisions. Lines may take flight backwards in order to move forwards (the lateral jump and parallel strand are also of prime importance). The painting previously entitled 'The Castle 1', is now renamed; 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 1'. Ultimately, the fixity of appellations should be of less relevance than the rhizomatic processes that bring them about.

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 1', Paper Collage & Acrylics on Panel,
600mm x 600 mm, 2022

[1.] & [2.]: Marcel Proust, ‘In Search of Lost Time’, ‘Volume 2, In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower’ (Trans. James Grieve), London, Penguin Books, 1919/2002