Doors Of Perception

My painting activity must undergo a brief hiatus over the next few days while I have the windows in my house replaced then reassemble my little studio room.  It’s frustrating as I normally want to hit the ground running with the next painting at the start of the academic summer break, but the disruption should be over soon.

Since completing ‘Closed 2’ I’ve played around with some smaller scale experiments in preparation for the next piece.  I want to continue with the ‘Closed’ theme and push it forward without slipping into a facile comfort zone.  I’ve also been reviewing my numerous photographs of closed doors, gates, shutters and other barriers.  Some of the recent ones are  here.  All were taken in West Leicester over the last year

These barred entrances constitute a repeating feature of the urban fabric and regularly play the role of un/official notice boards and carriers of all kinds of text.  They also come loaded with associations of security, privacy and exclusion and the obvious question of what lies on the other side.

On a purely visual level, I’m constantly drawn to the artificial colours of painted closures and the range of their substrates and industrial coatings.  Inevitably, this also includes a fascination with how their surfaces weather and degenerate and are punctuated by items of door furniture.  Pictorially, such subjects appeal to my taste for formal, geometric compositions with their frames, planks, panels and visible construction.

That last point reminds me of the exhibition of Gary Hume’s door paintings I saw at Modern Art Oxford in 2008.  Initially, these paintings seem to lack any obvious narrative content and have a slicker glossier aesthetic than mine, but they display a similar enjoyment of synthetic colour and compositional geometry.  Actually, once one knows they're based on real hospital doors numerous possible interpretations begin to cohere. 

Gary Hume, 'Girl Boy, Boy Girl', Gloss on MDF, 1990-91

Gary Hume, 'Four Doors 1', Oil on Canvas, 1989-90

Gary Hume, 'Shine', Gloss On Aluminium, 2001

Gary Hume, Door Paintings At Modern Art Oxford, 2008

Gathered together, Hume's doors display a multiplicity of formal variations on a simple recurring format.  That returns me to consideration of my own ‘Closed’ images and their potential to become a more extended series over the coming months.