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| 'Belgrave Gate: Yours 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel. 100 cm X 100 cm, 2013 |
It’s a relief to have completed my first large-scale
painting of the year, even if it has taken longer to get here than I’d
hoped. I’m constantly bemoaning the time it
takes me to get stuff done and this is no exception. Thankfully it’s more to do with my chosen
M.O. than any deficit of motivation, although I certainly have been rather lacking in physical energy during the early part of 2013. ‘Belgrave
Gate: Yours 1’ is a slightly clunky title but reflects the fact that it’s
the first fully complete piece in the on-going ‘Belgrave Gate Project' I introduced a few posts back. It seems logical to use the umbrella ‘BG’ label to identify the components of
what I hope will become an extended body of work in several media, ("not if you
work at this pace," I hear you cry).
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| 'Belgrave Gate: Yours 1', First Sketchbook Study, Acrylics & Paper Collage on Paper, 2013 |
Another reason for having taken a while over
this piece is my attempt to introduce a new element of pictorial representation
not really seen in my work for quite a few years. This may not seem particularly radical at
first sight but I quickly realised just how wedded to formal abstraction, and
the tyranny of the picture plane I have become over the years. Simple, semi-realistic depiction of
recognisable objects in some kind of illusionistic space involved using muscles
I haven’t flexed in a long time. Quite a
few hours were spent asking myself ‘how
do you do that?- I can’t remember’. Ironically,
much of that labour has been hidden beneath subsequent motifs in the final
painting.
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| 'Belgrave Gate: Yours 1', Second Sketchbook Study, Acrylics & Paper Collage on Paper, 2013 |
Superficially, the painting actually resembles
some of the pieces I produced in 2011. Like
them, its composition was derived through collaging together various disparate
elements and largely resolved in advance through a quite highly finished
sketchbook study resembling the final piece.
Sometimes I wish that more of that process could happen organically
within the actual painting but recognise that in the past this often led me to
spend even longer wrangling with pieces that became stale, overworked and
inconclusive. This way may be a
bit calculated but I do get more concrete results.
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| Burleys Flyover, Leicester, 2012 |
The big difference is that this time the chosen study was made
over an actual photographic image of Leicester’s Burleys Flyover and the
roundabout junction on Belgrave Gate beneath, with certain recognisable motifs
from it deliberately preserved in the final image. All the ‘Belgrave
Gate’ work is intended to relate to the specifics an actual location as
much as to the ideas and feelings deriving from them. Thus, it became important to retain the
dynamic deep-space thrust of the flyover curving overhead and the structural
framework of the road signs in shallow perspective as they appeared in the
original view. I was keen that these
elements should be depicted in noticeably different pictorial modes from the
rest of the painting. Ultimately, I
think I was partially successful in this
but the self-conscious employment of different methods of representation within
a single piece that will need further working out in future related paintings. In this case the representational motifs have
become buried rather too far beneath the other content, I think.
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| Burleys Flyover, Leicester, 2013 |
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| Graffiti Tag On Supermarket Wall, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013 |
Lying somewhere between the depictions of actual
objects and the legible textual elements are more formalised, oblique references to
the location’s actual appearance. These
include the vivid green background with its allusions to the corrugated
cladding and crazy colouration of the adjacent supermarket building. The more abstracted areas of primary red are
direct references to the bold complementary signage on the building’s façade. However, The lower red passage also has, integrated within
it, various impressionistic typographical references to my thoughts
about the location that have been obscured to become little more than visual
texture.
In contrast, the more prominent white text refers to specific legends within the observed scene and is
accompanied by motifs alluding to road signage and markings. ‘Yours’
is a direct quote from the supermarket’s identity signage whilst bubble-style ‘B’ character floating above everything
else derives from the large, contradictory ‘Blue’
Tag actually augmenting one bright green wall.
‘Yours’ itself is a pleasingly
intriguing phrase with the potential for multiple interpretations. However the commercial name ‘Yours Supermarket’ also indicates a
mismatch between ‘Standard’ English and colloquial Asian idioms. That’s both a reflection of Belgrave Gate’s
current cultural identity and something I observe frequently in my day
job.
As far as the actual method of execution
goes, it’s effectively business as usual.
I set out with the intention of including a greater proportion of
traditional brush painting and, to some extent, this did happen. However, there is still plenty of my
customary multi-layered paper collage approach too. Someone asked me recently if my work was
actually collage or painting which gave me some pause for thought. Essentially, I consider them to be painterly
in nature but find I remain very wedded to the kind of happy accidents that result
from torn paper edges and peeled strata. It's worth noting that much of the paper has been painted before being applied to the surface. Collage also seems a highly appropriate way to deal with text characters.
‘Belgrave Gate: Yours 1’ is a painting that raises as
many questions in my mind as it answers.
Overall, I’m happy enough with it as an image but slightly perplexed
that, having tried deliberately to move outside my existing comfort zone, I’ve ended up with
something not so different from much of my existing work. Maybe the main problem is that the things
that constitute some kind of departure are rather subsumed within a
familiar appearance. Perhaps one shouldn’t
expect too much at the start of a new phase of work. The only sensible thing to do is to get on
with the next piece(s) on the assumption that the distinctive characteristics of the project emerge organically over
time. Thankfully, there are enough leads in
this one for me to follow with that intention in mind.
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