Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 2'

'Deleuzian Cartography 2', Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Panel, 300 mm x 300 mm, 2024

Here is the second of my small ‘Deleuzian Cartography’ panels, a small clutch of which have recently emerged in the wake of my summer sketchbook experiments. As ever, the quantity/rate of production may feel a little less than desired, but the reality is that progress been consistent, and I think I’m reasonably content with the general direction they have taken so far. I think I should give up worrying about stuff like that once and for all, and just accept that I’ve always been a fairly slow, methodical worker, with many of the usual mundane limits on available time and energy in addition. Furthermore, each one of these often takes longer to resolve than could ever be predicted and - let’s face it, just churning-out a series of predictable ‘product’ shouldn’t really be the aim either.

In fact, the real ‘issue’ to be faced now is probably more to do with scale (i.e. the space side of the space/time interface). Any imagery deriving from maps must, by its very nature, imply a degree of open-endedness or extension. Ultimately, there is only one map after all (and it is spherical and without definitive boundaries). The end of one chart is just the beginning of the next. Even my own modest and localised voyages of discovery around the city reveal a seemingly limitless range of possibilities (what happens if I take this route instead of that? what happens around that slightly less familiar corner? How far can I really follow this river beyond the city’s nominal edge? etc.).

This would all suggest that one simple ambition should be to move away from what has become (often for simple practical reasons – or is it timidity?) my default ‘small’ panel size. I’m not necessarily talking Mark Bradford scale here, but the annexing of a little more territory is indicated, nonetheless. If limits on working/storage/living space all imply some conflict with that ambition, a sensible solution might be to consider the extension of imager over several conjoining sections. Thinking about it – that would be in keeping with the cartographical nature of this work too (see above).

Anyway, that’s all in a possible future. As far as this little panel goes, there is clearly some attempt to further dissolve the street plan into an abstracted soup of possible routes and directions generally. There’s also clear reference to the idea of the city being a vast circuit of energies and informational flows - as much as it is an arena for physical journeys. Overlaying (and threaded through) all this, more fluid traceries and Deleuzian rhizomes attempt to arc across, or take mental/emotional flight from, the territorial geometries of the map. That’s my excuse for a bit of Pollock-style drippage, and I’m sticking to it!

Completed Painting: 'Deleuzian Cartography 1'

 

'Deleuzian Cartography 1', Paper Collage & Mixed Media, 300 mm x 300 mm, x 1 2024

This is the first small panel to emerge from all my messing about with maps over recent months. As mentioned in my previous post, this imagery emerges from a period of sketchbook experimentation, in which recurring motifs and working methods were allowed to evolve in a fairly organic manner without too many constraints. For all that may feel like a new phase of activity, I now realise that this kind of thing superficially resembles some of the street plan-derived work I made a few years ago.

'Map 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2015

I guess that's how it goes sometimes - we set off in what we feel is a new direction, only to discover we've actually looped back round on ourselves without really knowing it. I'm going to tell/fool myself that this is hopefully less of a resort to some stifling comfort zone, and more of a re-statement of the central concerns within my work. As stated many time before - it's pretty much always about an interaction with my immediate (largely urban) surroundings, and the various ways in which it becomes codified and freighted with numerous tangled narratives. In this case, a conscious use of appropriated texts encountered at specific locations has given way (I think) to certain implied philosophical underpinnings - such as might be encountered in the work of Gilles Deleuze or Michel De Certeau, amongst others. 

There's far too much nuance there (and let's be honest - baffling complexity) to detail now. So, for the time being, I'll hang on to the hope that, rather than merely circling back to some earlier starting point, any movement achieved here is more representative of a spiral. Just as each time we pass through a certain location on the map - we may experience it in a slightly different way, so perhaps any return to possibly familiar creative territory may might contain the experiences, knowledge and insights gleaned since the last time we were there. Perhaps we can hope for a little more finesse too?

Yes - it may be another map-like yellow painting, but I've certainly torn up a load of paper, and read a lot more confusing books since the last one, so here's hoping...