Completed Paintings: 'Together 1' & 'Broken 1'

It’s never easy to evaluate one’s own work but sometimes you have a fairly strong instinct about these things.  Looking back at the paintings I’ve produced this year I’m probably happier with them than just about anything else I’ve made for a long time, (hence the existence of this blog as I noted in my introductory post).  At very least they represent a certain distillation of various themes, ideas and visual stimuli that have preoccupied me for some time.  They are also the result of a small but significant change in my general working method for producing paintings – one that has allowed me to work faster and with greater confidence.

'Together 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2011

Mel, 2010, Beatriz Milhazes

‘Together 1’ was the first painting to be completed this year and was definitely something of a breakthrough,  (there's a larger image of it on my preceding post).  It's made from a combination of collaged paper, (including photocopies and tissue) and acrylic paints.  As well as Artist’s Liquid Acrylic there are acrylic decorator’s paints in there too and several litres of P.V.A adhesive to bind it all together.  Whilst paint was applied directly to the surface with brushes knives and spreaders there are also passages formed from skins of dried acrylic. This method has intrigued me for a while, having seen it in the work of Beatriz Milhazes amongst others.  The black X symbol, hazard-stripe motif, R character and large red graffito were all largely produced that way.  After a little experimentation I found it pretty simple to build up layers of acrylic on sheet polythene and peel it off when dry.  This could be cut or torn into shape and collaged onto the surface.  I’ve habitually used collage techniques over the years and I’m pleased to have arrived at a point where they are combining in equilibrium with areas of directly applied paint.

I was determined to work on a reasonably ambitious scale and the 'in your face' nature of the image seemed to demand it anyway.  At a metre square it's hardly of mural proportions but is about at the limit of what will comfortably go up the narrow stairs to my 'studio'.  This is an issue as I paint on rigid M.D.F. so there's no option to remove and roll a canvas for transportation.  On the other hand, the board provides a nice solid support for all those layers pasted on top.  Prior to this most of my finished pieces had been relatively small.  Having the freedom to move my hand and arm over a wider arc certainly made painting more fluent.

I’ll give more insights into sources, themes and possible readings for these paintings at a later date.  Suffice it to say for now, “Together” is a phrase that’s been bandied about a lot this year by our lords and masters with reference to what, on a bad day, looks like the possible “collapse of Western Capitalism”.  It’s funny how they suddenly want to share…  It seemed important that the component characters and motifs should appear to originate from a range of official, semi-formal and ‘street’ sources.

I developed the dazed rat motif from a combination of found sources.  It seemed ideal as an allusion to a population trying to thrive through expediency in a bruising environment.  I’m sure we could discuss at length how, as a species, they survive on crumbs from the table, live all around us in invisible squalor and occasionally have to abandon sinking ships.  Actually, rats are a pretty common motif in much street art, running rampant through the oeuvre of Banksy, Blek Le Rat and others.  I guess I was alluding to that too.

          

Banksy

Blek Le Rat

Having completed ‘Together 1’ over a period of about six weeks, I launched straight into the next one, titled ‘Broken 1’.  One reason for ‘Together’ feeling like a breakthrough was the way it was planned.  For a long time my habit had been to allow a work to find itself through the process of its production by capitalising on accidents and chance events.  It relates to that “sum of destructions” quote of Picasso’s [1] or the existential creative struggle of people like Giacometti and Auerbach.  It’s all very heroic but one danger of ‘not knowing what the work will look like until it does’ is that it can make a fetish of frustration.  In those conditions successful resolution can become mistrusted if it arrives at all.  I think I was just keen to produce something a little less ‘wrangled’.

‘Together 1’ was derived from a sketchbook study that just seemed to work as it stood.  I’d already wrested a coherent image out of randomness and had my moment of struggle through a process of painted collage on the page.  It seemed perfectly reasonable to reproduce it at full size with only minor changes and minimal further development.  It made for a pretty enjoyable painting experience in which the main challenge was the technical one of finding appropriate translations from study to panel.  ‘Broken 1’ was produced in the same way.

Broken 1,  Acrylics & Paper Collage, 100 cm X 100 cm,  2011

All of the methods of collage and paint application already outlined were employed once again.  In addition, ‘Broken 1’ includes a large zone of thick, unctuous, yellow acrylic.  Trowelling that on was one of the most joyful bits of paint moving I’ve done in ages.  In both these paintings, my search for a heightened colour palette led me to include some fluorescent colour.  In this case there was a challenge in getting the fluoro yellow graffiti motif to sit comfortably over an already heightened yellow ground.

Thanks should also go to my work colleague Dianne for her original doodle of the red graffiti tag.  I’ve generally found it hard to consciously summon the calligraphic spontaneity necessary in such motifs.  Somehow, using someone else’s handwriting is always more successful.  Once again, the title arrived courtesy of the news media, 'Broken' being an oft-used descriptor of our current society.  Of course, a lot of other things can also be prefaced with 'Broken'.  Amongst them I might include 'Promises', 'English', 'Spirit', 'Homes', 'Bones' and 'Dreams'.

[1] “Formerly pictures used to move towards completion in progressive stages. Each day would bring something new. A picture was a sum of additions. With me, picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture, then I destroy it. But in the long run nothing is lost; the red that I took away from one place turns up somewhere else”.

Boisgeloup, winter 1934, quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 256 (translation Daphne Woodward)