Proceed With Caution

Christmas approaches; the year starts to dribble away; I’m between painting projects and currently exploring ideas for my next work phase.  As usual in late December, I’m a bit oppressed by weather and light levels, frustrated by an endless stream of calamitous news reports and physically drained from striving to earn a daily crust.  This year, the routine viruses and fatigue are accompanied by a torn calf muscle, - the result, ironically, of an attempt to gain a little more fitness and health of late.  It’s not all negative though.  The school term is over, my time is my own for two weeks, (with anticipation of festive indulgences) and several potential ideas bubble away encouragingly, just below the surface.

At this early stage, before things have coalesced, the most useful thing to do is to get out in the world in search of visual stimuli and the thought processes that they release.  Hence, I found myself out with the camera in Leicester a few days ago, in bitter temperatures but beautiful light, exploring a fascination for hazard warning graphics.  For the first time, I also collected some low-grade phone-video footage.  I think one of the themes of the coming year may be an attempt to augment my painting practice with extra, possibly time-based media elements.  It’s something I’ve never tried before.

For some time, I’ve been visually attracted to the bold interventions of hazard stripes, road markings and related signage that are such a feature of our environment.  The dynamism of their graphic devices and urgent primary colours seem to intrude into the world like an arbitrary, alternative reality, - the complete antithesis of naturalism in any form.  As I photographed a couple of local railway bridges and an adjacent car park, I was increasingly struck by how much this application of synthetic, high-impact black and primary yellow onto the visual environment reflects a disjuncture between the realities of life and the search for a world of total security.  In these cases, it all related to transport systems and traffic management, causing me to reflect, in parallel, on how constant movement and flux are intrinsic to urban life.

I’ll admit that some of this may stem from the influence of Health & Safety guidelines on my work as a school technician.  Having worked with hazardous materials and witnessed the multiple routes to death or injury existing around industrial processes I won’t pretend that much of this stuff isn’t important.  However, I’m not the first to notice the bizarre, potentially infantilising way that H&S culture can replace a realistic understanding of the world, survival instincts and basic ‘good sense’.  So often, the ever-multiplying sea of high-vis clothing, replicated documentation and warning signage appear to be primarily for the benefit of lawyers and insurance underwriters.  Of course avoidable risks should remain exactly that whenever possible but can any species really evolve through total risk aversion?  Should we really resign all responsibility for our lives to the wielders of the yellow paintbrush?

I have a feeling that Safety Yellow and diagonal stripes may play an important role in my next phase of activity, possibly in some attempt to explore the distinction between the formalised process of ‘Risk Management’ and the experience of genuine existential hazards.  It’s all fairly undefined as yet but at least some primary yellow should brighten up a gloomy winter.